define the currency of an ecosystem
DESCRIPTION
The second challenge from the Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials MOOC. Here are the instructions: For the ecosystem you defined in Challenge 1, How are competencies defined in your industry or community of practice, and by whom? What are the learning frameworks that guide learners toward achieving the competencies? Who assesses learners’ competencies? What evidence documents learners’ competencies, and who has access to this evidence? Can individuals assert competence without having undertaken a learning program, e.g., through tests or prior learning evaluation? How are learners’ competencies recorded? Who are the consumers of the records of competence? Outline the shortcomings and strengths of the current currency exchange in this ecosystem. Create a persona/archetype that represents an assessor stakeholder. This could be articulated as an additional role for your learning provider persona from Challenge 1. Elaborate on your “before badges” user stories from Challenge 1 to include more detail about the current state of the currency exchange.TRANSCRIPT
Employees need minimum
number of PD hours per year
Employee
Employees seek out and attend
training opportunities
Trainer
Supervisor reviews
evidence of PD for annual
performance review
Supervisor
Aaron is an instructional designer for a state college. In order to document his Professional Development, he keeps copies of seminar descriptions, certificates of attendance, receipts, whatever artifacts he can, hoping it’s enough. He often thinks he learns as much from online resources, but since he can’t prove it, he attends often boring and uninformative workshops, just to get the certificate of attendance.
Asha is the owner of a small company that offers workshops and seminars for a variety of organizations. Each organization seems to want something different to verify employee attendance: a certificate, an assessment, or just a receipt for payment. She gets frustrated when attendees just show up for the credit, clearly not interested in what she’s trying to teach.
Phil is Aaron’s supervisor. He reviews and approves PD activities, but generally has to just trust his employees. The certificates of attendance don’t prove knowledge, and he doesn’t know if employees attend conference sessions, or just socialize in the lounge. And conferences are so expensive! Sometimes it seems like off-site PD is just a nice way to get out of the office.
Instructional Technology is a relatively new as a field, though people have been performing difference aspects of it for a very long time.
Having different paths to enter other than a specific college degree provides opportunities for those with informal learning and experience to work as Instructional Technologists.
Using portfolios provides evidence of skill and ability above just having a degree, which varies widely from institution to institution.
