- 8:30 – 9:00 am – Welcome by workshop co-chair and track chair
- 9:00 – 10:00 am – Keynote, Nate Otto
- Next-generation Architecture for Trust – An alarmist take on the current social media landscape would have you fear large companies’ algorithms that guide what you see and think. But the truth is that the algorithms now deployed to show us what is trustworthy and relevant just aren’t very good, and we need to improve on this state of the art. Nate will argue that the next true leap in understanding our world and each other will come not from the trust silos but from the thoughtful cooperation of distributed systems that are interoperable based on open standards and present in the spaces that make up our virtual worlds.
- 10:00 – 10:30 am – Morning networking break
- 10:30 – 11:15 am – Lucas Blair, Game Designer, Co- Founder at Little Bird Games
- Dungeons and Dragons and Badges – A great deal of progress has been made in the design and development of digital badging systems over the past few years. There is, however, room to improve in areas like tracking earner competencies and developing more adaptive badges. Tabletop and video role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons provide a variety of ideas that could be integrated into digital badges to improve earner experience, learning, and motivation. During this session attendees will participate in a discussion about the incorporation of game design mechanics from role-playing games into badging systems.”
- 11:15 – 12:00 pm – David Leaser, Senior Program Executive, Innovation and Growth Initiative, IBM
- IBM Case Study: How to increase online course completions with Open Badges – While the dropout rates for online courses are typically 85% or more, there are ways to improve the numbers. In this session, you will learn the challenges IBM faces with its online courses and how its IBM Open Badge program helped solve the problem. After introducing Open Badges, every metric, from new attendees to course completions to the average number of courses taken, increased well beyond expectations. Come to this session to see exactly how IBM achieves impressive results. You’ll leave with an action list to show you how to marry your digital training strategy to digital credentials and improve your numbers.
- 12:00 – 12:45 pm – Lunch
- 12:45 – 1:30 pm – Stephanie August, Program Director, National Science Foundation
- 1:30 – 2:15 pm – James Willis, Community Content Curator, IData Inc.
- Badges as Augmented Credentialing in a World of Increasing Automation and Artificial Intelligence – STEM education plays an important role in society’s technological progression. However, increasingly, automation and artificial intelligence will lead to loss of jobs, increased outsourcing, and shifting economies. In order to remain relevant and well-trained in the workforce, STEM students and vocational learners can benefit from emerging micro-credentialing opportunities with open digital badges. Badges can help evidence claims to demonstrable competencies in a variety of skills that align and complement workers’ chosen fields. Furthermore, VLE offers additional opportunities to provide evidence of learning in advanced fields. Digital badges can provide the mechanism by which learners can connect their VLE experiences with specific claims to learning and remain ahead of the automation and artificial intelligence workforce changes.
- 2:15 – 3:00 pm – Chris Gamrat, Instructional Designer, Penn State
- Design Considerations for Digital Badges – Offering badges may seem straightforward but their ability to connect and rich metadata present several important questions for the designer. In this session, you will learn more about what questions to ask and how to plan when implementing meaningful badges for your audience. We will discuss several points that have been identified by experienced instructional designers and badge creators and how these questions apply to your own contexts. This session supports brainstorming to practice how you might approach designing your own badges find useful applications of badges in your work.
- 3:00 – 3:30 pm – Afternoon networking break
- 3:30 – 5:00 pm – Group Work
- 5:00 – 5:30 pm – Closing Remarks