Bridging skills and careers with Open Badges at the University of Westminster

Stephanie Coelho: Hey everyone, my name is Stephanie Coyo and I work as a digital learning development specialist at the University of Westminster. We are a higher education institution supporting more than 21,000 students on our undergraduate, postgraduate, and professional courses.

 

Stephanie Coelho: So we chose Open Badge as we wanted a way to recognize the development of skills by our students and staff outside of their degrees. There’s always been a gap, particularly in digital skills, and by individuals completing tasks and earning badges, we’re able to celebrate bridging that gap. I’d say that our key challenge was that we needed something that was easy to share as we are a large organization and verifiable and open badges provided that solution. They enable us to showcase the achievements, particularly of our students, in a way that’s credible and transferable, and ultimately it helps them to demonstrate that after their graduation, they’re ready for employment.

 

Stephanie Coelho: At Westminster, we’re using the badge system in multiple ways, whether that may be integrated within modules like the study skills and employability one or on a much wider scale their employability award. Within this award, by students obtaining their silver, platinum and gold awards, they’re showcasing the time they’ve taken in enhancing their career development and the extracurricular activities that they’ve completed during their time within the university. We also have the Westminster Digital Academy, which I’m a huge advocate for that focuses specifically on digital skills. We have multiple badges within this, ranging from communicating and participating in social platforms to finding and using information. Across the years, the visibility of these short courses have increased, and the badges obtained in the past year have almost tripled from the previous. So I’d say that the status of this particular project is running quite successfully and gaining a lot of interest from students.

 

Stephanie Coelho: Our most earned badge is the ICT Skills proficiency one. This badge comprises of several short courses like Java Basics, using PowerPoint and computer security and safety. Essentially, students will go through the learning content within each of the courses and complete a short quiz at the end, just to ensure they’ve understood everything. I’d say that this is definitely a useful badge as throughout this process, learners understand how digital technology is changing practises at work, in education and in social life too.

 

Stephanie Coelho: So, what’s next for Westminster? We are currently in the relaunch phase of the Westminster Digital Academy, which is something that I’m very, very excited for. We are looking at the courses that we currently offer and starting to develop and provide a lot more in AI literacy. We’re also in the process of integrating badges into our work-based learning placements and modules and working out how we structure those. If I could give one tip, it would be to always keep on top of your badges. That’s what helps it stay relevant and provides students with a reason to keep coming back to earn another one. For me, I always try to keep in constant communication with students and have built a sort of digital academy network allowing me to encourage students to take those short courses and earn digital badges.