Welcome to Badge News from We Are Open Co-op! This is a new bi-weekly newsletter to keep the Open Badges community informed of what's going on, in-and-around the ecosystem.

This issue's featured article has been chosen by Credly. Click through to read about how they worked with the Lumina Foundation, the American Council on Education (ACE) and the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) to launch a crowd-sourced challenge aimed at generating breakthrough ideas to help bridge the skills gap for education and industry association leaders.

Latest news

Innovative uses of badges

Del Lago Academy in Escondido, California, is a high school with around 800 students. Their focus is on 'Applied Sciences' which they understand as meaning developing the knowledge and skills future employers are looking for, but also developing relevance and interest for students in their everyday lives, here and now.

Competency X is Del Lago Academy's badging platform, made possible through grants supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Badges are available in line with the Next Generation Science Standards, with defined pathways that lead towards digital portfolios.

Badges are available for all kinds of knowledge and skills, with one highlighted every quarter in a 'badge showcase' — along with an example portfolio of student work.

Recent academic articles

• Gunn, C. (2017, March). Using digital badges in faculty development: Motivating or meaningless?. In Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 1562-1567). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
• Jones, W. M., Hope, S., & Adams, B. (2017). Teachers' perceptions of digital badges as recognition of professional development. British Journal of Educational Technology.
• Milligan, S., & Kennedy, G. (2017). To What Degree? Alternative Micro-credentialing in a Digital Age. In R. James, et al. Visions for American Tertiary Education. (Link)

Did we miss one? Incorrectly cite something? Send in a correction! Note that if an article listed above does not feature a link, this is because it is not available on the open web. You may be able to get access to it via your local library.

Upcoming events, webinars, and community calls

• 13th March-12th May (Online) — Open Badges: An emerging movement to recognise non-formal and informal learning (Session 2: Policy of Open Badges) — a MOOC being run by the Open Badge Network.
• 5th-7th April (Hämeenlinna, Finland) — Badge Finland! — a workshop being run by Discendum Oy.
• 6th-8th April (Online) — Get Into Digital Badges — a MOOC being run by Superb Learning.
• 27th April (Brussels)  — Presenting the IBM Open Badge Program — an event being run by Open Badges Belgium (Be Badges).
• 24th June (San Antonio, Texas, USA) — 2017 Badge Summit — a conference organised by Noah Geisel.