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Alternative credentials – micro-credentials, stackable credentials, and digital badges
I’ve had varying levels of interest in micro-credentials and its cousin – digital badges- over the years, ranging from “not interested” to “there’s great potential”. Part of the reason is that any innovation that resembles a twist on something that higher ed has been doing for decades, especially if technology is the twist, evokes an eye roll in me. This summer’s personal and consulting project had me diving in a bit more into the world of micro-credentials, stackable credentials, and digital credentials. And no, these aren’t all the same thing, but they occupy the same house called alternative credentials. Here’s what I learned: There are no common definitions Alternative credentials…
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Hiding in plain sight – Feminist perspectives of distance learning
Sometimes you read a post that is so insightful that it shifts your entire way of thinking and seeing. I felt this way when I first read Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams and Henry Trotter’s Social Justice Framework for open education and Sarah Lambert’s Social Justice Aligned Definition of Open Education . Both of these articles helped me push through some of the things I was struggling with in relation to open education, namely how do you talk about the relationship between language, power, and knowledge (and colonial consequences) in relation to the goodwill gestures of putting OER out into the world. So when I interviewed this year for a bucket list job…
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Language and the OER problem
I have about 3 posts I could write about this topic and eventually I might get to my 2 half-baked drafts and book reviews, but the topic is complex and multifaceted, so let’s see where this goes. One of the shifts in OER movement that I’ve really appreciated has been the thread of declaring social justice as part of what we do in the OER space. I’m hoping that as we evolve we can remember that social justice is inherently tied to language which has been so well argued in Ingrid Pillar’s recent book: Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice. OER has a language problem. The majority of OERs are in…
