Ontario Open Badge Forum 2019 round-up

The Ontario Open Badge Forum made its return on March 1, giving 110 participants the chance to understand the benefits of Open Badges, an alternative tool for recognizing skills and credentials. Through a series of lively presentation and discussion sessions, forum attendees connected with other open learning enthusiasts and learned how to leverage Open Badges, both in education and the workplace.

Left to right: Don Presant, Mark Surman, and David Porter

Following the keynote by Mark Surman (Mozilla Foundation), who emphasized with the example of email how small innovations lead to big change, learners and leaders in a range of post-secondary, non-profit, government, and for-profit industries shared their 5-minute stories about the potential and power of digital credentials. They each brought unique challenges to forum attendees, who considered them in table discussions during two rounds of “pop-up design sessions.”

Attendees of the forum indicated that they enjoyed the opportunity to learn about the different ways that open badging is being conceived and utilized in different contexts. Many also indicated they enjoyed the enthusiastic discussion during the design sessions. As one participant noted, “I learned a ton from my table and met some great new badging champions to connect with.”

At the conclusion of the forum, David Porter invited all participants to join eCampusOntario’s Open Badging community, which remains open to all Ontario’s public post-secondary institutions. To join, complete the sign-up form at this link: https://www.ecampusontario.ca/oobf19/#Sign-up.

See the list of links below for more information on the full day’s agenda, recordings of the plenary and Ignite sessions, and presentation slides. Take a glimpse into the day’s events by viewing the Flickr Photo album.

• OOBF 2019 Agenda
• Youtube Channel
• Flickr Photo Album