Month: July 2017

Open Recognition and its Enemies (2) — No Informal Learning without Informal Recognition

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: By my faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing anything about it, and I am much obliged to you for having taught me that.
—The Middle Class Gentleman (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme). Molière

In the previous post, I (briefly) explored the dangers associated with the formalisation of informal learning, how these dangers might be increased with the use of the first generation Open Badges, in particular how the Mozilla Backpack in that context “reduced individuals to the submissive puppets of institutional ventriloquists.” In this post and the next, I would like to expand the exploration of informal learning recognition, more precisely, how does informal learning operate within the informal space and from here imagine the tools that might contribute to making informal recognition visible, valuable. If Open Badges made informal learning visible, what could make informal recognition visible?

Recognition of vs. recognition within

Searching Google for “recognition of informal learning” then “recognition in informal learning” (with the quotes), the first query returned approximately 50,700 entries, the second only 1: “Course in Assessment of Informal Learning” © State of Victoria. It is a very comprehensive and well structured document containing a full description of the outcomes and competencies with performance criteria, range statements, etc. —I am personally indebted to Australia, especially the State of Victoria, for the many excellent resources on competency frameworks they have produced and used in my work. I wish that more course descriptions were just half that good. Despite the great quality and value of this document it is not what I was looking for. What I was looking for is information on how recognition operates within the world of informal learning.

Continue reading →

Open Recognition and its Enemies (1) — The genesis of Open Badges

Why have I not published lately?

A number of important events have occurred since my last post, starting with the disfiguration of planet Earth when a big orange blob fell and spattered across its surface. The fascination for this phenomenon has been a major distraction from my daily routine. I probably spend at least one hour a day trying to follow and understand what’s going on — why do people look like rabbits caught in the headlights, especially when the headlights are so dim? I must confess that under those circumstances, I find it difficult to follow Spinoza’s motto, nec ridere nec lugere sed intelligenre (neither laugh nor cry but understand) as I laugh a lot at what most likely makes my American friends scream or cry. With my attention focused on that part of the world I feel like that person who, in a plane, concentrates his mind on the flight events in the hope that it will help the plane land safely. The problem is that we are probably on Germanwings Flight 9525!

The other reason for my lack of public posts is that I had to digest what I was learning about the real impact of Open Badges and how people understand what they could do with them. Thanks to the notoriety and appeal of Open Badges (many find them “sexy”) and as there are not so many French experts on the subject, I have had the opportunity to be invited to meet a wide range of actors, both in the field of formal and informal education (and non-formal, but in the rest of this post, I’ll conflate non-formal and informal under informal). And what I have realised with great concern is that Open Badges are far from innocuous. They can have a very negative impact on learning and its recognition.

If we do not pay attention, Open Badges could become the weapons of mass destruction of informal learning!

Continue reading →