Pearson, edX, Educational Testing Service, Workforce.io, and more to align with the Open Badge standard

Today, we’re proud to announce a number of major educational and workforce development organizations including Pearson, edX, Educational Testing Service (ETS), Workforce.io and more have committed to adopting the Open Badges standard.

This news was announced today at the Open Badges Summit to Reconnect Learning in Redwood City, CA, where more than 250 people have gathered to discuss how to recognize achievements, competencies, and skills wherever and however they are learned.

There are now more than 2000 organizations issuing badges that align with the Open Badges standard. Mozilla is supporting this growth through the release of BadgeKit, an out-of-the-box offering for organizations looking to issue and recognize badges. Additionally, we’re very excited about the creation of the Badge Alliance, a new network of organizations that are committed to developing and growing a badge ecosystem with shared values including openness, giving learners agency, and innovation; to be headed by Mozilla’s Open Badges pioneer, Erin Knight.

Mozilla first began working on the Open Badges project with the MacArthur Foundation and the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) in 2011 as an attempt to create a universal way of recognizing the learning that happens everywhere — both inside and outside of the classroom. Though others had previously explored this idea, it was the “open” part that made Open Badges so unique; by keeping the tech and infrastructure open source, we ensured that we weren’t just creating more silos, but rather building the foundation of an ecosystem to foster and recognize the holistic way we now learn.

We’re excited that these new education and workforce organizations will be joining the ecosystem, and anticipate the arrival of additional major partners in the months to come. Read the details below, and follow along what’s happening at the Open Badges Summit on Twitter with #SRL14.

Introducing new partners who committed to align with the Open Badges standard and integrate badges into their work:

  • Pearson: Pearson has launched Acclaim, an enterprise-class Open Badge platform built to support the world’s most prestigious credentialing organizations and post-secondary academic institutions.
  • edX: edX pledges to work with its open-source community, Open edX, and Mozilla to implement a badges system for the approximately 2 million edX students to showcase their completion of edX classes.
  • Educational Testing Service: ETS pledges to continue to provide effective and efficient tools to measure student learning outcomes and student success through assessments such as the ETS® Proficiency Profile and iSkillsTM assessment, using Open Badges to capture and showcase student learning outcomes assessments so that test takers have yet one more way to provide evidence of their skills to academia and beyond.
  • Workforce.io: Workforce.io pledges to create an online platform that utilizes job skill badges & video content as a new common language for the entry level & middle skill jobs to connect the employer, job seeker and trainer with this new language and re-align today’s workforce.
  • Council for Aid to Education and ProExam: Professional Examination Service pledges to partner with the Council for Aid to Education to issue Open Badges for the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+) and College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA+).
  • Afterschool Alliance: The Afterschool Alliance pledges to work with Mozilla and five Statewide Afterschool Networks to offer open badges to youth and adult workforce in afterschool and summer programs.

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