The use of Open Digital Badges is relatively new and innovative initiative made possible by recent technological developments. Open Digital Badges present librarians with new ways of engaging with patrons. Open Digital Badges can offer cultural heritage sites, galleries, libraries, archives and museums useful tools to support their visitor’s learning. People who are visiting heritage sites and experiencing a heritage may acquire Open Digital Badges which evidence their learning.
There are several definitions of Open or Digital Badges. Mozilla Foundation (Mozilla Foundation, 2012) defines Open Badges as “a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest used to set goals, motivate behaviours, represent achievements and communicate success in many contexts”. Grant (2016, p. 3) defines Open Badges as „digital image files that contain metadata, and their origins are inseparable from the ethos of open source code and software protocols “. Liyanagunawardena, Scalzavara and Williams (2017, para. 1) define Open Badges as “a digital representation of skills or accomplishments recorded in a visual symbol that is embedded with verifiable data and evidence. They are created following a defined open standard, so that they can be shared online”.
Thus, Open Badges, also referred to as Digital Badges or Educational Badges, are visual symbols or digital representation of knowledge and skills, learning achievements or experience for certifying and recognising learning acquired from different educational providers, and packed with data and evidence that can be shared across the web. While a Digital Badge is an online representation of a skill the learner has earned, Open Badges take that concept one step further, and allow learners to verify their skills, interests and achievements through credible organisations (Openbadges.me, 2018, p. 2; Virkus, 2019).
On its surface, a badge is nothing more than an image file encoded with metadata such as which organisation awarded it, the name and description of the badge, what skill, competency or achievement the badge represents, the criteria for earning the badge, the date of issue, if and when it expires, and links to evidence for why it was awarded. With support from the MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla developed an Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI), an open standard that was released in 2012. The OBI is a key element in the adoption and success of an ecosystem of badges, designed to support a broad range of different badge issuers, and to allow any user to earn badges across different issuers, web sites and experiences, and then combine them into a single collection tied to their identity (Mozilla Foundation, 2012, Ash, 2012;Virkus, 2019).
Video 1: What is a Badge?