Rubrics, Assessment and eProctoring in Education

I was exchanging some emails with an a esteemed educational researcher and administrator about our Big Open Online Course on Educational Assessment and open courses in general and mentioned badges.  In his reply he asked, "what do you mean by 'badges'?"  After an amazing day of progress working with digital badges yesterday, it was a nice reminder of just how new this concept is. So I figured I would reply with a basic explanation and provide some timely updates on one aspect of our badges work.
Digital badges are web-enabled credentials.  Unlike traditional grades, transcripts, certificates, etc., badges can contain specific claims about accomplishments, along with detailed evidence (and links to more evidence) in support of those claims.

Open Badges are (adapted from Doug’s presentation above):

* visual representations of achievements, learning, skills, interests, competencies – anything you want the badge to represent,
* a complement to traditional education ‘certification’,
* capable of accommodating formal or informal pathway for learning,
* representative of hard & soft skills, peer assessment, and ‘stakable lifelong learning’,
* snapshots of learning wherever or however it occurred,
* ‘stealth assessment’!