"...the fact remains that testing has had its greatest impact in  the schools and currently is doing the worst damage in that area by falsely leading people to believe that doing well in school means that people are more  competent and therefore more likely to do well in life because of some real ability factor."

Competency‐based education (CBE) programs have spread briskly in higher education over the past several years and their trajectory continues to rise. In light of the spread of competency‐based models, this article provides a brief history of CBE in the United States.

The Competency and Skills System (CASS) enables collection, processing, and incorporation of credentials and data ("assertions") about an individual’s competencies into accessible, sharable learner profiles. CaSS will create an infrastructure enabling competencies, competency frameworks, and competency-based learner models to be managed and accessed independently of a learning management system, course, training program, or credential. See also: CASS Documentation.

In my view, knowledge isn't a type of belief or opinion at all, and knowledge isn't the sort of thing that needs to be justified at all. Instead, knowledge is a type of perception, which we call 'recognition', and knowledge serves as the justification for other things, including opinions and beliefs.

ePortfolios and Open Badges are only the first wave in what will emerge as a wider network-based form of assessment that makes tests and reviews unnecessary. In this talk I discuss work being done in network-based automated competency development and recognition, the challenges it presents to traditional institutions, and the opportunities created for genuinely autonomous open learning. See also the transcript of this talk.

Free tools to issue Mozilla Open Badges. Design and award your own open badges: credential skills, recognize learning and create bite-sized rewards to support micro-credentials in your eportfolio.

"Open Badge Factory is a versatile platform for organisations wanting to create, issue and manage Open Badges. Suitable for any organisation, big or small, Open Badge Factory is a user-friendly and cost-efficient service to start issuing Open Badges and building sustainable Open Badge ecosystems."

General information page about badges. "Open Badges are verifiable, portable digital badges with embedded metadata about skills and achievements. They comply with the Open Badges Specification and are shareable across the web. Each Open Badge is associated with an image and information about the badge, its recipient, the issuer, and any supporting evidence. All this information may be packaged within a badge image file that can be displayed via online CVs and social networks." See also the IMS Open Badges specification.

Application for creating digital badges. Badgr is open source software based on open standards.  Here's the community website. Here's a sample of me creating and awarding myself a badge on Badgr.

Jacob Demmitt, The Roanoke Times, Nov 26, 2018  It was only a matter of time. "Virginia Beach-based ECPI University has joined a group of early adopters that distribute student degrees through the same kind of decentralized computer networks that power Bitcoin... The concept behind the technology is virtually unchanged, except ECPI is using the blockchain to issue digital degrees instead of digital currencies." The plan does have a definite upside: "It’s on there for life. They never have to call the registrar’s office and order another diploma." Web: [Direct Link] [This Post] Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

What if teachers learned to perform to transform rather than be a guide by the side or a sage on the stage? Teachers perhaps need to be an equal part performer who enact and 'live' the subject in their interactions with students.

The SpeechRater engine processes each response with an automated speech recognition system specially adapted for use with nonnative English. Based on the output of this system, natural language processing (NLP) and speech-processing algorithms are used to calculate a set of features that define a "profile" of the speech on a number of linguistic dimensions, including fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary usage, grammatical complexity and prosody. A model of speaking proficiency is then applied to these features in order to assign a final score to the response.

The extensive use of Data Mining and, particularly, Text Mining can greatly improve speed and quality of competence assessment, making it less human-biased at the same time. This approach should improve business processes and significantly decrease HR expenses. Several researchers and developers work in the field of applying modern Data Science approaches to the field of Competence Management.

AI Engine analyzes individual learner performance against key competencies across entire program – automating individual “learner fingerprints”. Assessment data categorized by block, assessment type, skills, body systems, threads, competencies, and EPAs. Learner dashboards provide progress snapshots toward mastery of key competencies throughout the education journey.

Our framework comprises key video clips extraction, trade recognition and worker competency evaluation. Trade recognition is a new proposed method through analyzing the dynamic spatiotemporal relevance between workers and non-worker objects. We also improved the identification results by analyzing, comparing, and matching multiple face images of each worker obtained from videos. The experimental results demonstrate the reliability and accuracy of our deep learning-based method to detect workers who are carrying out work for which they are not certified to facilitate safety inspection and supervision.

Predictim, an online service that uses “advanced artificial intelligence” to assess a babysitter’s personality, and aimed its scanners at one candidate’s thousands of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts. The system offered an automated “risk rating” of the 24-year-old woman, saying she was at a “very low risk” of being a drug abuser. But it gave a slightly higher risk assessment — a 2 out of 5 — for bullying, harassment, being “disrespectful” and having a “bad attitude.”

The plan is to link public and private data on financial and social behavior across China, use the data to evaluate behavior of individuals and organizations, and punish or reward them according to certain agreed upon standards of appropriate conduct.

Through the use of cognitive computing tools like machine learning, predictive analytics, robotics processing automation, and both image recognition and natural language processing, underwriting is becoming less manual and more automated. Providers of the tools offer novel ways for underwriters to better gauge risk, set premiums, save time, become more efficient and lower loss ratios.

This is the official listing of products that have passed IMS Global interoperability. Using these products will enable your institution to achieve the benefits associated with IMS. Products that are listed in this directory are guaranteed to meet the IMS standards for which they have passed testing.

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, Nov 30, 2018 This article describes the failings of an autograding system in use in a computing science class in Berkeley. The use of autograders in computer sciences is a natural development, as programs can be tested by debuggers and efficiency algorithms to determine not only whether they run at all, but also how well they run. This article records what happens when they fail, but it's more useful reading when looked at from the context of what should happen when they run successfully (which is what they usually do). Web: [Direct Link] [This Post] Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Connie Yowell, Wayne Skipper, LRNG, Dec 19, 2018 This announcement portends a developing ecosystem outside the traditional LMS infrastructure. LRNG - which recently merged with Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) - allows cities to create an openly accessible network of learning and employment opportunities accessible to schools and youth (see here). It has announced a partnership with Badgr to support awarding badges and displaying badges. "This partnership will allow LRNG users to curate badges from various sources, then share them out selectively." Additionally, "we’re working with Classcraft on an API that has allowed their educators and classrooms to access LRNG’s playlists." Classcraft allows teachers to  "create self-paced, personalized learning adventures for students out of existing lessons." Web: [Direct Link] [This Post] Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Looking back through this blog, I am reminded that in 2012 I attended a SCoPE seminar on digital badges and wrote two posts about it. Reading back through these posts I see that at that time I had some reservations… Continue reading → Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

The rich data tapestry of student learning records, might get at a more accurate picture of whether the student's abilities will meet the requirements of a certain job profile. But is the conjecture true for all types of assessments, and will it lead to more justice, and should we embrace machine decisions here?
Continue reading → Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

This week Stephen invited Viplav Baxi to join him in a discussion about this week’s topic – Recognition – for the E-Learning 3.0 MOOC. They only mentioned badges briefly, but the task for participants this week has been to create… Continue reading → Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

This week’s task over at E-Learning 3.0 is to create and award a badge to yourself, and then reflect on the process. I am still very mixed on the use and effectiveness of digital badging. I’ve had experiences in open learning spaces like CLMOOC and WriteOut (where we designed a Playlist format with badging as […] Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

I have been trying to catch up since I started this E-learning 3.0 MOOC (I started doing week 4, Identity, when the course was almost in week 5 !!), and finally I think I´ve done it! Week 6: Recognition – Task: Create a Badge The instructions for this task were: Create a free account on …
Sigue leyendo Week 6: Recognition – Task: Create a Badge Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

I really appreciate how reading other people’s blog posts in the E-Learning 3.0 community sparks my thinking. A piece by Matthias in reference to Stephen Downes’ exploration of badging as possible tracking system or as an outcome of automated assessments in a decentralized Internet made me pause. Matthias writes: I think, for the final summative assessments deciding […] Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Now that I have awarded myself my first Doin’Stuff badge, I now need to do the three parts of the task. I created my WordPress blog on Doin Stuff with a post called elearn 3.0 Week 6 Recognition Task (which I hope you are reading). When Stephen provides the document, I can enter my RSS … Continue reading "elearn 3.0 Week 6 Recognition Task" Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

In our course E-learning 3.0 (#el30) we discussed assessment. Course facilitator Stephen Downes: The traditional educational model is based on tests and assignments, grades, degrees and professional certifications. But with activity data we can begin tracking things like which resources a person read, who they spoke to, and what questions they asked. We can also […] Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

I’m so happy that eL3.0 has finally moved in to an area where I feel like I know what I’m doing. This week on eLearning 3.0 we moved on to assessment and recognition of learning. The conversation between Stephen and Viplav … Continue reading → Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

I’m falling a little bit behind on #EL30 at the moment, hoping to put some time aside to catch up properly in the coming weeks. For the ‘Resources’ module of the course, Stephen set the following task for us: Create a free account on a Badge service (several are listed in the resources for this … Continue reading "#EL30 – Recognition Task" Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

We have now come to the end of the sixth topic – Recognition – in Stephen Downes’ E-Learning 3.0 MOOC.  For me, this has been the least satisfying of the course topics so far. I have been trying to work… Continue reading → Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Recognition is this week’s topic for #el30 and the abstract asks two very different questions: How do we know a course has been successful? How do we know what someone has learned? For me, these are not necessarily related like a geometric proof. If this -> then that. If the course is successful the student […]

This post is about a badge I designed called the ‘Connected Learner’. In the world we are all connected, but how often do we connect? This badge can be earned by following some simple steps. If you are reading this, then you have some sort of online presence, even if that is as one who […]

Recognition in Education_could come in the form of evaluations, badges etc. The answer to ‘how do we know hat this person is a qualified doctor?’ is the same as the answer to the question ‘how do we know that this is a tiger?’ In short, assessment is about recognition, about trying to figure out how […] Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]