“How to recognise skills in social and professional communities?”
This was the subject discussed during the MIRVA workshop at Promised Land event in Milan last June. Competencies are a treasure growing on a territory and feeding its future, but they often remain unseen. MIRVA project partners shared the ongoing work on defining the Open Recognition Framework and practical guidelines for different use cases, testing their usefulness and applicability with workshop participants, in particular relating the work in progress on the following guidelines:
- Recognition Guidelines for Communities & Individuals
- Recognition Guidelines for Organisations & Practitioners
The questions the workshop addressed were:
- How can we make visible all the skills people develop in social and professional communities?
- How can we bridge formal and informal recognition?
- How to maximise the value of informal recognition? How can informal recognition inform formal recognition (and conversely)?
If the workshop was to be described in short: An open badge can help to expand opportunities of a person or group. A great short video impression you see below.
Guidelines for Communities and Individuals
Philippe Petitqueux from DRAAF de Normandie (a MIRVA project partner) shared new information on this guideline for Communities and Individuals.
Several personas were shared based on the concept of the use of open badges. A signpost badge for example is offering an opportunity to a person. With this Philippe referred to the Recognition Matrix. With this matrix the context of the use of an open badges is much more obvious. Many organisations use open badges to confirm an achievement. This is great in a traditional and formal environment. But in the context of adult learning a self issued badge can empower people to create their own learning pathway.
Guidelines for Organisations & Practitioners
Chiara Carlino from Cineca (a MIRVA project partner), introduced the MIRVA project to the visitors. A short interactive poll was used to see how the visitors responded to questions like ‘Why do we need our skills to be recognised?’ or ‘In what way can recognition help to expand their opportunities?‘. When asked in what way recognition can help, the majority answered that it can help to expand their opportunities.
Visitors had the opportunity to explore new tools designed to make informal learning and recognition visible.
Discussing the Maturity matrix
Chiara Carlino discussed how to check the Open Recognition maturity status of the attendees organisation. Therefore the Open Recognition Maturity Matrix can be used in an individual of group exercise to:
- Identify the current state of inclusiveness of an organisation.
- Identify the areas of excellence and those that would need improvement.
The participants of the workshop practiced on how this could help their organisation.
Interview with Bernhard Lange
After attending the MIRVA workshop Bernhard Lange – from the university of Luzern gave an interview. He emphasized the power of a badge, especially the potential it has in relation to opening recognition. “What I like is the idea of democratisation of giving opportunities, giving recognition to tasks, hard tasks and complicated tasks sometimes of people who don’t get any recognition for it. And that for example having a gap of 5 years in your CV now you have a badge can tell a future employer about what you have done. It looks a lot more valuable than it would without.”
