Don Presant is an experienced educator, researcher, and innovator in the field of digital credentials. He is the Founder and President of CanCred by Learning Agents, a company that provides digital credentialing solutions for education and training organizations. Don has been working in the field of digital credentials for over a decade and has been a key contributor to the development of the Open Badges standard. He is a sought-after speaker and presenter on the topic of digital credentials and has presented at numerous conferences and events around the world. He is also a member of the board of directors for the Open Recognition Alliance, a non-profit organization focused on advancing the use of digital badges and credentials.
In this blog, Don talks about the ways to expand the use of digital badges beyond credentials to create a powerful recognition system.
David Leaser
Today we’re joined by Don Presant from CanCred by Learning Agent about expanding the use cases for digital badges beyond credentials toward open recognition.
Don is an experienced educator. He’s a researcher, an innovator in the field of digital credentials. He’s the founder and president of CanCred by Learning Agents, a company that provides digital credentialing solutions for education and training organizations. He’s been working in this field of digital credentials for over a decade now, and he’s been a key contributor for the development of the open badge standard. He’s an international presenter on the topic of digital credentials. He’s presented at numerous conferences that I’ve been to and events around the world. He’s also a member of the board of Directors for the Open Badge Alliance, which is a nonprofit organization focused on advancing the use of digital badges.
We thought this would be a nice opportunity to get your point of view on where digital badges are right now and what the opportunities to expand their value and just starting out with just your point of view on open recognition and where badges are, and where do you think we’re at in the industry with using badges beyond digital credentials.
Don Presant
I like to say, well, I wear three hats. I’m an advocate, I’m a consultant and I’m a service provider. As an advocate I discovered open badges back in 2011 and they just struck me as such an accessible way to help people say and demonstrate what they know and can do regardless of where they picked that up. So I brought that to this conference I’ve been going through since 2003 and it’s grown like policy ever since you were at the 2016 event in Bologna when we signed the Bologna Open Recognition Declaration. So for me, it’s always been that idea of accessibility and inclusivity I guess.
When I first heard the term micro credential, I thought, “smaller credentials.” That can kind of work, but then I started learning more about the baggage that comes with that with that term, and the fact that it seemed to me in junior diplomas. So, LEGO degrees and, to me, that just brings in so many issues. I’m saying let’s remember Open Badges, that started all this, and let’s remember there are more open ways of recognizing what people can do.
Jim Daniels
So I’m 100% with you on that. I can remember back when I first got exposed open badging. It was very beginning of 2015 back when I was with IBM and partnered up with David to kick off the effort to get IBM’s digital badging program up and running. But it took me a few years to really start to understand sort out the meaning or definitions between the terms, “credential” or “micro-credential” or “digital badge” or “badge credential.” I came to my own conclusion over time of completely separating the term “badge” from the term “credential. Badges are the container, the transport mechanism. What they represent can be just about anything, right? The badge is not “the thing,” it represents the thing, and it sounds that’s what your line of thinking is as well.
Don Presant
Very much. There’s a short hand in Canada where they talk about micro-credentials as digital badges. that’s reality we have to live with, but I think it is very reductionist and sort of gets away from really valuable types of recognition that don’t have to be formal.
David Leaser
It’s limiting the power of badges and I remember Serge Ravet always says “badges mean trust, how much trust is too much.” and I was talking to Wayne Skipper about badges and he held up his hand. He started moving his fingers and he said, “Who’s to say that my dexterity is not the most valuable capability I have in a VR world. Why would you not want to capture?” We limit ourselves by not capturing all this information. Even in large companies that we work with think badges are used to capture hard skills or technical skills; they don’t capture the human capabilities as well. If you’re only capturing the technical skills and you train somebody up on those, but then they hate their jobs because all we know about them is that they know how to use Excel or they know how to use their cloud- based architecture. But we don’t know if they have human capabilities. We don’t know if they are even interested in that.
Don Presant
I’m in that sort of open recognition type community. They talk about badges as connectors. It’s a way of connecting people to opportunities, people to people, people to organizations, organizations to people. When you talk about that person coming in will probably they want to know something about the company they going to be in and maybe something about the job that they’re going to be in so they can connect to other people. If it can be more organic, more of an ecosystem or a community, even a community of practice, then you’re connecting with people, you’re engaging with people based on interest and passions. It’s a little more holistic and a less reductionist to say we’ve got capture all of these things. It’s like in that job interview. When they say, “Tell me about yourself.”
Jim Daniels
When you think about how a person’s career plays out and I look back over all the years . . I’ve been in the IT industry and sitting through performance reviews. What are my objectives going to be for this year? Training and education and skills development has always been part of that, but that’s just part of that. There’s probably been a bigger emphasis on the kind of accomplishments in a way of outcomes that result from having developed those skills or attended that training. I think managers in the organization look at “How am I giving back? I experience this a lot because I work in a consulting capacity to help people stand up credentialing programs. They are almost always focused on documenting skills and capabilities, right? Knowledge skills and abilities, but then I always bring in not just KSA, but the “o,” Other achievements. It’s really important if you’re going to use badging to document these kinds of things. I think it’s really important you document the full picture and help that individual build out their full profile and brand.
Don Presant
One of the things that was been as being introduced in the community is this idea of “Selfie” badges where you give yourself a badge and then you look for endorsement from other people. A friend of mine works in the restaurant industry with some amazing training systems
In Western Canada, and he had this whole program where someone might start as a dishwasher and work up into being a cook, executive chef, and then even a manager. It was all soft skills-based.
David Leaser
When we started the badge program at IBM, we wanted a program which would have a certain level of trust and we said that there has to be an assessment for every one of digital badges — and that pretty much the way that program continues to work. But early on, I was at the Urban Institute on a thinktank-type of panel. And there were a lot of professors from different colleges there. And they were asking very intellectual questions. But when I was done, and the panel was over, I expected to talk to a few of them. Instead, there were several young African American men that were in the room. They were probably about eighteen years old, and it was really refreshing to see them come into this room. And they came up to me and said, “We want to earn badges on data science. How do we do it?” I started talking to them about their had their hobbies and things like that. They were typical young men and women, interested in sports, in fishing, culture and music. I left that room thinking we are really limiting ourselves. If I’m able to capture somebody who doesn’t have any kind of schooling, but they have a passion or interest in fishing and I can get them skills in math or technical skills, I can get them a job working at Cabela’s or some great place they’re going to love because they’re going to take their passion and add some of these business skills that are needed. And if they’re interested in music, that’s a really good transition to math. That event really changed my point of view to what you’re saying about expanding the value of badges and to allow some self-assertions for these badges, and I love the idea of the endorsement too.
Don Presant
We’re doing some work right now with Cal State, Dominguez Hills around transition students, going from the two-year college to the four-year university and issues of retention and student success around that. We are working with a wonderful woman who says, think of what got you here. Can we help you tell your story while you’re here? It’s not just about, “I took this course about public speaking.” This is how it’s going to take it forward, maybe aligned with like sustainable development goals. This is my passion and life, and this is how I’m going to use my skills to do it. So, picking up on that Cabela’s idea, maybe there’s a passion for the environment that are wetlands or whatever that’s coming out of that, right? There’s a really interesting keynote that was an ePIC last year called “Clock your Skills” and it’s basically taking formal recognition industry and formal recognition in parallel of skills and the creative industries that are aligned to the European qualifications framework. So they take people who are working in the music industry and say, you’re actually operating at a level of an advanced apprentice. So let’s see if we can get you some recognition. They do some work integrated learning, and they do a bit of reflection, and then they start getting to college level. It’s kind of like the New Collar idea, except it’s focused on the creative industries. So essentially what they’ve set up as a parallel system where it can be totally industry-facing if you want, but they have this agreement with the local polytech university, Middlesex University, to get that recognition. So very authentic, very passion based and, recognizing what they know and can do in context rather than saying you have to fit this mold. Really exciting stuff and we’re helping them implement the badges for that.
Jim Daniels
A couple of things that you’ve said here along the way around community really strike a cord. I’m currently working with a client in Europe that has decided to expand their badging program beyond knowledge and skills recognition and apply badging to their online community environment to encourage engagement to build that sense of community and get people talking with one another and contributing, writing articles and blogs, and uploading instructional videos. I’m wondering if you’ve had any exposure or seen others that have taken badging or at least discussed it taking it in that direction?
Don Presant
There are a couple of recent examples. I’m just finishing up a file for an organization based in Italy and they started with the certificates and very much inspired by the European transcript system. They are intrigued by events and the idea of coming together around events and engaging people with digital badges around events. We’ve come up with a junior framework for them. We are also working with another group, helping them with a framework and a taxonomy to doing something really interesting with water management in Latin, American Caribbean, tracking the status of fresh water in all those countries in the regions. Another thing we are developing is a concept of a learning organization. So, in other words, badges for change management for organizations. We can recognize the organization with a badge.
David Leaser
I love that whole idea that badges are data and that’s really what it’s all about, the data. We were originally fixated on the style of the badge and the colors and all these other. Now, we have this opportunity to really mine that data in ways that we couldn’t before. Years ago, we started using AI and we found that we had these prescribed plans for people where we recommended they go from course one to course two. But we found the actual journeys people took in real life looked more like an airline map. They go to a course and then to a hackathon and then to an online course. With badge data, you can provide a better a way to get people to where they should go. But back to communities, the really amazing is the compounding value of badges and that. Customer support calls are very expensive. If we can get that question answered in a community, we can do it for a fraction of the cost. And,typically, one answer to a community member answers seven other people’s questions. So it’s literally a seven to one benefit, all done online. It not only provides real market value for a company by reducing the support calls and reducing the friction for customer doing business with the company, but then it also increases the content that you have in your company as well. Community members get badges for answering questions and, if they get that recognition, they’re going to do more.
Don Presant
That’s a particularly helpful recognition badge that I’d like to show people.
No matter who you are, you should be able to recognize other people – not just be recognized, because essentially if two people come into a community, and they have no recognition, they could recognize each other and at least get a start.
Jim Daniels
In some of the work I’ve been doing around communities, that very thing has come up in terms of earning criteria. If you think about different thresholds of recognition you could get as someone who’s engaging in this community environment, what are some of the criteria and how other people are reacting or the kind of value they get from what you’re posting?
To me, this community work is one of the best examples of where a badge really does a super effective job of addressing the three primary stakeholders, the issuing organization where these badges ultimately drive down support costs, the earner being recognized for stepping out of their core set of responsibilities and giving back and contributing and it’s helping build their eminence in helping them grow their brand and the consumer. One of the more challenging areas I’ve encountered is this: What really needs to be recognized in that badge? What should it be representing in a way of an adjustment or just simple recognition? I’m curious as to what you think about this. There’s all the specific criteria that says, I got to this level, and this is my contributor badge or I went to this level, but the piece that I keep coming back to is having that badge represent someone’s human. Are they someone who exhibits leadership qualities? They’re really taking a leader kind of position in that community.
Don Presant
That’s the whole soft skill versus vertical skillset. I’m not sure how necessarily scalable at all is, but I think it comes down human connection. Once you get past the initial gates, what are you going to be like to work with what would it be like to work with you?
Badges can also be stories that can be authentic stories, relating how you did something in a certain place at a certain time. That might be transferable to a different situation. What kind of person are you? Are you an ideas person or are you a decision person? Do you like to really dive into the details or do you want to stay at the top level?
David Leaser
Going back to what you’ve always been preaching that there’s a balance of how many badges is too many. I think we need more, but we need to find better ways to mine that data and to be able to filter and sort it to use that data.
Don, any final thoughts or places that people should go to learn more.
Don Presant
Well, I would, I would invite people to come to the ePIC Conference and also come to the Badge Summit. We’re in partnership with Noah Geisel between the badge summit and conferece. We’re going to be featuring each other’s content at the respective conferences. So in July in Boulder and then early December in Vienna.
But we need to look at the ways in which we can value all these different kinds of badges in that big tent and not just say that “these are good, and these are not.”
Jim Daniels
Thanks so much for being with us today. This has been a really unique topic and one, quite frankly, needs to be talked about more – expanded uses of badging for things that go beyond skills and knowledge and capabilities recognition.
