Encouraging Faculty Development

Yesterday at mLearn 2016 in Sydney, Lisa O’Neill, York University, talked on "Encouraging Faculty Development Through Micro-Credentialing". This presented a good overview of the mechanics of recognizing small units of learning with "badges". However, what is also needed is a way to motivate university academics to learn to teach and undertake activities which award such badges.

I suggest that university educators should follow the approach used by nurses and computer professionals in Australia to enhance their recognition of their profession. This could include draft policy for universities and government to require and recognize teaching qualifications of university academics. Also they could suggest changes to university ranking schemes to give teaching quality the same weighting as research output.

Australian universities commonly have a 40/40/20 expectation of academics: teaching 40%, research 40%, and engagement/administration 20%. So it would be reasonable to have teaching weighted equally with research, when ranking universities and university academics.

Open Badges No Answer to Australian Research Skills

The Insignia Project is researching the use of open badges to overcome the lack of basic courses for Australian research students. It seems to me there is a much simpler solution: provide courses for Australian research students, as is done in other countries. This can incorporate Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) using e-Portfolios.

As described on the Insignia blog, Australian research students are only required to produce a document (thesis or dissertation) to get their degree, they are not required to undertake any formal courses. As a result it can be difficult to ensure that all students have the required skills in research methods, ethics and literacy.

The Insignia project aims to solve this problem by awarding  "badges" to students for undertaking informal education. Instead of doing a formal course run by the university at which they are enrolled, the student undertakes some informal learning and for this they are awarded a "badge" by the university.

Research Methods Courses

The universities of other nations address this issue of basic skills by requiring all students to undertake formal courses. Given that universities are already step up to run courses, that would seem the obvious solution to the Australian problem.

Currently I am a postgraduate student of education at a North American university. I am required to undertake core courses, regardless of if I am doing coursework or research. In addition, as I plan to do research I am required to undertake a course in research methods, before I can commence research. Apart from ensuring I have the required skills for research, this allows me to try it out. If I, or my supervisor, decide research doesn't suit me, I can continue on as a coursework student (doing a smaller "project" rather than a thesis).

I can apply for credit for courses I have already undertaken at other universities. Also I can have skills learned outside a formal course recognised by RPL. As well as undertaking courses, both coursework and research students are required to reflect on their studies in an e-portfolio (I am using Mahara for this).

This process would seem to be suitable for adoption in Australia, to ensure all students have the required skills. It could be build on the current coursework processes already in place and would not need a new  "badges" system to be developed.

RPL in Australian VET Sector

The part of Australian Higher Education which has the most experience with RPL is the Vocation Education and Training sector (VET), both government TAFEs and private Registered Training Organisations. To teach in a VET institution, formal qualifications are required. To obtain the necessary Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (TAE40110) I went through RPL at the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT). My university qualifications in teaching and experience allowed me to obtain 80% of the certificate by RPL and I did online courses (using Moodle) for the other 20%.

The VET system uses "Units of Competency", equivalent to about one day's training, as its building blocks, which could be seen as "badges". There are very detailed specifications for each unit, which are standardised across Australia. Also the RPL process requires trained assessors.

If Australian universities want to create a system of "badges" then it would need to create something like the VET system. This would require standardised definitions of units and also require training of staff to assess these (the training which university lecturers get is not adequate). A system where universities each create their own incompatible badges and where these is no quality standard and no accredited training of assessors would not solve the skills problem and would lower the quality of Australian research degrees.

See also, "Proposal for Incorporating an ePortfolio in the ANU Master of Computing".

Learners Were Always Feral

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Joyce Seitzinger is speaking at "Have learners gone feral?". This is part of an open badges research project, funded by the Office of Learning and Teaching. The idea of digital badges are a form of lightweight digital educational certificate. A student might get a badge for a small amount of educational achievement, such as a few hours study. This is different to, for example, my Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (which required six months study).

While I understand how this might apply to schools and vocational education (where competencies are divided into very small components), but it is not clear how it would apply to universities. After getting a GCHE, I went along to the CIT to obtain the vocational equivalent. Whereas the university made me do all the classes and assessment, the vocational institution accepted evidence of my having already achieved most of the skills, by experience as well as in formal classes. When I had ticked off all the requirements (like collecting badges) my Cert IV in Training and Assessment was awarded. It seems to me that education has always been mostly an informal process in the real word, it just just that universities are the last to admit this. 

 It seems to me that the major issue for open badges at universities is the lack of openness in the forms of education and assessment used. If programs and assessment are open then badges would be easy to implement. The area for research should be how to have traditional universities accept these badges. This will require showing the universities how they can make money out of the badges.

ps: many years ago I visited a research centre in Cambridge which developed the Active Badge System.

Event Details

Have learners gone feral? Accessing and accrediting learning at the edges of educational space

Learners have been teaching themselves for many centuries. However in our highly connected time learning practices have truly gone feral. Twitter drips out 140 character learning bites around the clock. Google Scholar gives you, on demand, as many resources as you need. Scoop.It lets you connect with experts in your field who are curating the best and most recent information on any topic you are interested in. Don’t know how to make that widget? Search YouTube or, better yet, join a maker community.

According to Pew Research the age of ‘binge learning’ in linear courses might be coming to an end: we can now all “graze on information” anytime, anywhere. So how are people organising these platforms and information streams to maximize their learning? Is it possible, or desirable, for formal higher education providers to engage with these independent learners and add value?

More importantly, if learning is feral and happening everywhere, how can we assess and accredit the learning that is happening in existing higher education settings, but not as part of formal course work? A conventional degree testamur is a ‘mute’ object that actually tells us very little about the richness of the learning that is taking place, especially around the edges of formal coursework. It looks like Mozilla’s Open Badges may be an important piece of the puzzle, a way of making learning more legible to others, and to the learner themselves.

In this lecture Joyce Seitzinger will discuss the concept and potential of Mozilla’s Open Badges movement against the background of these feral learning practices and sketches out what this new development might mean for our universities.

Bio:

Joyce Seitzinger has worked in eLearning for 15 years, including 8 years in higher education in New Zealand and Australia. Since 2007 she has become a strong advocate of networked learning in education and organisational learning. Her consulting service Academic Tribe helps individuals and organisations build networked communities and practices in education that suit lifelong learning needs in the 21st century. Joyce is one of the founders of the newly established OBANZ (Open Badges Australia and New Zealand) community. She is an active Twitterer, follow her at http://twitter.com/catspyjamasnz to see what she’s working on.

Refreshments will be provided.

This project is funded through an Office of Learning and Teaching seed grant.