[Air-L] 1st International Workshop on Open Badges in Education (#OBIE2014)

[Sheryl Grant]

Hi everyone,

Apologies for cross-posting:

1st International Workshop on Open Badges in Education (#OBIE2014)

- https://sites.google.com/site/obie2014ws/ -

=> in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Web-based
Learning (ICWL2014), Tallinn, Estonia, 13-16 August 2014

=> proceedings published by Springer


IMPORTANT DATES
====================================
* 1 May 2014: Paper submission deadline
* 23 May 2014: Notification of acceptance
* 13 June 2014: Camera-ready paper
* 12 August 2014: Open Badges in Education workshop day (to be confirmed by
the Conference organizers)


OVERVIEW
========
Open Badges (OBs) initiative is a community effort aimed at introducing
novel means and practices for knowledge/skill assessment, recognition, and
credentialing. Along the way, it is also promoting values such as openness
and learner?s agency, as well as participatory learning practices and
peer-learning communities.
Even though digital badges are not a new phenomenon, their use prior to the
emergence of the OBs initiative was largely associated with isolated
efforts of individual organizations, and there was no systematic approach
to issuing and using badges. Likewise, OBs should not be equated with
digital badges that are used solely as a part of gamification efforts aimed
at motivating users for different kinds of tasks; OBs differ in at least
two significant ways. First, they allow learners to gather badges that
originate from different sources (i.e., organizations acting as badge
issuers), and to select and combine the earned badges into custom profiles
suitable for the given occasion (e.g., job application). Second, OBs are
self-sufficient in the sense that they carry all the information one would
need to understand and value the achievement/status they refer to.
All these novel and distinctive features have positioned OBs as suitable
candidates for addressing some of the pressing challenges in the context of
life-long and Web-based learning, including: i) recognition of learning in
multiple and diverse locations and environments that go beyond traditional
classrooms; ii) recognition of diverse kinds of skills and knowledge,
including soft and general skills; iii) recognition of alternative forms of
assessment; iv) the need for transparent and easily verifiable digital
credentials.


TOPICS OF INTEREST
==================
Open Badges (OBs) are rapidly gaining traction among educational
practitioners as well as education-oriented companies and non-profit
organizations. However, so far, there have been only a few research studies
aimed at validating the propositions related to OBs. This indicates an
obvious need for higher engagement of the research community in order to
assure a deeper understanding of not only OBs and their potential roles,
but also the larger educational ecosystem within which they operate and
evolve.

Considering everything stated above, this workshop would welcome
submissions on some of the topics from the following (though not
restrictive) list:

* OBs as a motivational mechanism
* OBs as a mean to support and promote participatory learning practices
* OBs as a mean to support and recognize alternative assessment
* OBs as a mean to recognize prior learning
* OBs as a mean to facilitate charting of learning trajectories
* OBs as a facilitator of self-regulated learning
* OBs as a mean for building and maintaining learner's profile (portfolio)
* Implementation of OBs in different kinds of educational settings (formal,
non-formal, informal)
* Software systems and tools for the implementation and deployment of OBs
* Technical challenges in enabling the intended functionalities of OBs


SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION
==========================
We welcome the following types of contributions:

   * Short (up to 5 pages) and full (up to 10 pages) research papers,
   * Poster abstracts and system demonstrations (should not exceed 2 pages).

All submissions must be written in English and must be formatted according
to the Springer LNCS format
(http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).

Please submit your contributions electronically in PDF format at

  * https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=obie2014

All the submissions will go through a double-blind review process.
Submissions
will be evaluated according to their significance, originality, technical
content, style, clarity, and relevance to the workshop.
At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to attend the
workshop.

All accepted workshop papers will be published in a separate
post-proceedings volume in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science
(LNCS).


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
===================
* Weiqin Chen, University of Bergen, Norway
* Vladan Devedzic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
* Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University, Canada
* Jelena Jovanovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia


PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
===================
* Samuel Abramovich, University at Buffalo - SUNY, USA
* Simon Cross, The Open University, UK
* Elizabeth Dalton, University of New Hampshire, USA
* Rebecca Galley, The Open University, UK
* Sheryl Grant, Duke University, USA
* Richard Kimbell, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
* Rudy McDaniel, University of Central Florida, USA
* Ivana Mijatovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
* Michael R. Olneck, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
* Razvan Rughinis, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania
* Jose Luis Santos Odriozola, KU Leuven, Belgium
* Julian Sefton-Green, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, UK
* Felicia M. Sullivan, Tufts University, USA

For further questions please contact the organisers via
*** obie2014[at]easychair.org ***


Sheryl Grant
Director of Social Networking
HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation
Digital Media and Learning Competition
sheryl.grant at duke.edu

Duke University
114 South Buchanan Blvd.
Smith Warehouse
Durham, NC 27708