Badges4Good - Online Training for Facilitators of Endorsement in Recognition Systems

In November 2020, the online training course “Facilitation of Endorsements in Recognition Systems” was implemented as part of the Badges4Good project.

The training consisted of five different sessions from the 10th to the 27th of November. The online sessions aimed to:

• exchange ideas and good practices among participants and partners of external recognition of open badges;

• develop the understanding of staff members of partner organisations on how to build external recognition of digital open badges;

• develop participants’ capacity to act as facilitators of external recognition, enabling them to build and maintain relations for external recognition of digital open badges;

• identify opportunities and plan the implementation of activities that would lead to better external recognition of open badges;

• engage with external target audiences in discussions and debates on the value and benefits of digital open badges for young people, youth work and society.

The first session was mainly to get to know each other and defining key terms and concepts such as open badges, badge system, endorsement, validation and external recognition. These concepts set the base for what was coming next. 

During the second day of the training, participants learnt about good practices of endorsement and the value that open badges and badge systems can create to learners, organisations and society. They also had the pleasure of having Ingrida Jotkaite, the president of the Eurodesk network. She shared how Eurodesk Lithuania created open badges to recognise the achievements of volunteers and young journalists. In addition, she shared tips on how to promote Open Badges and how to organise endorsements and provide additional external value to a badge. 

In the third session, participants had to find real endorsers for their badge systems. They also learnt about Open Badges system design, why to use Badge System in the organisations, twelve good practises of Open Badges and how to define the process in which badges could be useful. 

The fourth session was more practical. It was about mapping potential endorsers for a particular badge system, learning programme or organisation. Through Jamboard each organisation mapped their potential stakeholders according to the level of difficulty to reach them and according to the amount of value this potential stakeholder could provide. 

Finally, the last session was broadcasted live through Facebook. External people interested in the training course were invited to take part. The participants went through what the challenges and examples of external recognition of Open Badges are and also shared the results of the online course created for those willing to facilitate external recognition processes in their organisations.