The Role of Endorsement in Open Badges Ecosystems

Abstract

In order for badges to gain acceptance, structures must be in place to ensure transparency and confidence in the badging process, as well as trust amongst badge earners, issuers, and consumers. Badges enable new learning ecosystems, necessitating new methodologies for validation of learning providers, assessors, and learning outcomes. Endorsement provides conceptual and technical infrastructure for third-parties to publicly acknowledge the value of badges. The endorsement specification, part of the Open Badges Standard, enables endorsement of any of the badge objects, i.e. Badge Class, Issuer, or Assertion. Endorsement encourages the development of trust networks and connections among stakeholders in communities such as education, government, standards bodies, employers, and industry associations. It helps badge earners understand which badges carry the most value for their goals. Badge issuers benefit from external validation of their badges. Educators, employers, and other consumers who evaluate learners’ achievements can better determine which badges are most appropriate in their contexts. Badge endorsers make their values known by analyzing the quality of specific badges, including how the badge is defined, the competencies it represents, its standards alignments, the process of assessing badge earners, and the qualifications of the badge issuer to structure and evaluate the learning achievement represented by the badge. Endorsement enables validation in open badge ecosystems, furthering badge opportunities.