Pinning down employability - digital badging on an undergraduate module at The Open University Business School

Terry O’Sullivan, The Open University, UK 

Email: terry.osullivan@open.ac.uk                 

Click to download Pinning down employability - digital badging on an undergraduate module at The Open University Business School (.pptx)

Abstract

Digital badges have been an impressive success story within the Open University's non-formal learning provision since the launch of OpenLearn's pioneering Badged Open Courses in 2015. By 2020 over 165,000 badges had been awarded, many of them in recognition of employability relevant achievements. But digital badging has been slower to take off with regard to formal, credit-bearing provision at the Open University and elsewhere.

This presentation reports on a recent scholarship project piloting the use of digital badges to recognise and reward employability-related learning on an OU Level 2 (Level 5) module on customer behaviour. It considers the parts that ordinary academic credit cannot reach, and proposes digital badges within modules as an attractive addition to the awarding ecosystem that will help promote active self-regulated learning and enhance graduate employability.