Join us to discuss and learn about the potential of digital badges to facilitate learning and address learning competency transfer issues in an online higher education environment as well as their value across hybrid and traditional learning environments. We'll share what we've learned about digital badges and their implementation from our experiences building a pilot badge program at an institution with increasingly diverse program options. Badging allows for new solutions to define and establish student learning outcomes, provides a platform to teach and learn those skills, and includes a transferable method to effectively communicate standardized skills development by students to faculty, support staff, and (following graduation) potential employers.

OUTCOMES:

Determine badging issues and types that are best for confirming competencies
Explore the use of badging programs across various educational settings including online, hybrid, and traditional
Learn about issues and options from a real-life implementation of a badging program

ASU librarians launched a pilot digital badge system for students to learn and demonstrate information and research proficiency while addressing two recurring needs with one solution. Specifically, college professors desire ways to improve and ensure high levels of research skills among their students (including transfer, distance, traditional, and online). In 2012, Project Information Literacy reported that employers seek candidates who can locate, select, and synthesize information and use information with colleagues to create new solutions to problems. Digital badge systems are scalable; they also promote learning and provide a way for students to demonstrate that learning to instructors and employers.

Objective: to explore currently available Open Educational Resources related to Health Sciences programs to increase available options for free, high quality, online educational materials to support Health Sciences faculty, researchers, and students in online, hybrid, and in-person courses at Arizona State University.

Background/Methods: Following the successful Open Access movement, the Open Education movement is expanding free, online access to Open Educational Resources (OERs), beyond research published in scholarly journals. Similar to the Open Access movement, Open Educational resources are of high quality, available for free, online, with minimal or no licensing restrictions. They include, but are not limited to: syllabi and course modules, open textbooks, and massive open online courses (MOOCs). Arizona State University (ASU) has many fully online degree programs from undergraduate to graduate level, as well as supplemental and continuing education certificates. ASU also has many hybrid programs and in-person courses that include online components. Instructors are often searching for online videos or other high quality, online educational materials that they can incorporate in their courses. OERs may provide some useful options. ASU Libraries became involved in Open Education Week in March 2013. To expand on our involvement and increase resource options at ASU, the presenters decided to begin identifying useful OERs for health sciences. To do so, the presenters searched for and evaluated 2-3 sources for OERs each and noted the advantages and/or disadvantages of each, as well as any highly useful specific OERs.

Results: The presenters will discuss the advantages and/or disadvantages of evaluated sources for Open Educational Resources and any highly useful specific OERs identified. We will also provide a brief overview of open source tools related to citation management.

Conclusion: Come to this presentation to explore the Open Education movement: hear about one research university library system's start with Open Education Week, and get an overview of free, online options for high quality Open Educational Resources in the Health Sciences.