It can provide members with professional development and learning, facilitate accreditations and certifications that are critical to their careers, and increase the levels of engagement between societies and their members, and between the members themselves.
professional development and learning, facilitate accreditations and certifications that are critical to their careers, and increase the levels of engagement between societies and their members, and between the members themselves.
strategic goals to the professional needs
strategic goals to the professional needs of their members
valuable program of benefits that will attract new members, and bolster retention rates
Member needs
Lifelong learning.
Lifelong learning. M
Supported professional development.
Convenience.
Convenience. U
Community engagement.
Community engagement.
Our successful eLearning packages are being adopted by membership organizations around the world as we combine our expertise in publishing with our experience in developing digital learning environments to create new possibilities for our society partners.
"The Varied Functions of Badges" summary from HASTAC discussion, 9/2012
My interest in the functions of badges was spurred along when the MacArthur Foundation asked for help documenting the design principles for using digital badges that emerge across the 30 projects underway by the awardees in their Badges for Lifelong Learning project. We needed to come up with a manageable number of categories. Here is what we came up with:
Recognizing Learning. This is the most obvious and arguably the primary function of badges. David Wiley has argued cogently that this should be the primary purpose of badges. If we focus only on purposes, then he may well be right. His point is that badges are credentials and not assessments. This is also consistent with the terrifically concise definition in Seven Things You Should Know About Badgesby Erin Knight and Carla Casilli.
Assessing Learning. Nearly every application of digital badges includes some form of assessment. These assessments have either formative or summative functions and likely have both. In some cases, these are simply an assessment of whether somebody clicked on a few things or made a few comments. In other cases, there might be a project or essay that was reviewed and scored, or a test that was graded. In still other cases, peers might assess an individual, group, or project as badgeworthy.
Motivating Learning. This is where the controversy comes in. Much of the debate over badges concerns the well-documented negative consequences of extrinsic incentive on intrinsic motivation and free choice engagement. This is why some argue that we should not use badges to motivate learning. However, if we use badges to recognize and assess learning, they are likely to impact motivation. So, we might as well harness this crucial function of badges and study these functions carefully while searching for both their positive and negative consequences for motivation.
Evaluating Learning. The final category of
#change11, blog post by Bon Stewart, May 2, 2012
And here's the rub...
"The original MOOCs - the connectivist MOOCs a la Siemens & Downes, and the work of David Wiley and Alec Couros and others - have been, for the most part, about harnessing the capacity of participatory media to connect people and ideas. They've been built around lateral, distributed structures, encouraging blog posts and extensive peer-to-peer discussion formats. Even in live sessions showcasing facilitator's expertise, these ur-MOOCs have tended towards lively backchannel chats, exploring participants' knowledge and experiences and ideas.
They've been, in short, actively modelled on the Internet itself. They've been experiential and user-driven. Their openness hasn't stopped at registration capacity, but extended to curricular tangents and participatory contributions and above all, to connections: they've given learners not just access to information but to networks.
They've been messy, sometimes, but they have definitely not been business as usual.
The problem with EdX is that, scale and cost aside, it IS essentially a traditional learning model revamped for a new business era. It puts decision-making power, agency, and the right to determine what counts as knowledge pretty much straight back into the hands of gatekeeping institutions."
top reason is the quality of the society or association’s research-based content, closely followed by the prestige of the organization. The membership requirement to attend the annual meeting, career certification requirements , and networking opportunities round out the top five.
Members and nonmembers alike highly value societies’ peer-reviewed journals and opportunities for continuing education. Whereas members value the peer-reviewed journal first and continuing education second, the order swaps for nonmembers.
interesting survey results on benefits valued by members of scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly communities. Top two benefits were peer reviewed journal and continuing education for members and nonmembers.
Book that has 2 sections: Global Networks Virtual Issues and Transnational Citizenship. 2014. Taking stock of what we know about the Information Age with no stabilization of its complex social, technological and political arrangements.