Has anyone else been reading a lot about these lately? I think it's a fascinating idea that has some real implications on how people might be educated in the future.
Essentially, they are badges awarded by organizations that prove the holder of the badge has mastery of a very specific topic.
A person responsible for hiring could scan (or click) on the badges and get all of the information about the organization that awarded the badge as well as all the information about the person who earned the badge. This would allow them to pinpoint the best candidate to fill specific positions.
I could see this effecting higher education in a couple of really interesting ways:
Colleges would become essentially trade school (something I think they're doing right now, anyway). People would pretty much work on their own, without the usual time constraints of class, doing the work as quickly or as slowly as they wanted to do it, only meeting with their professor when they got stuck. With this scenario actual physical colleges could eventually disappear. Maybe holding a degree wouldn't be important at all, just acquiring badges would be the goal.
Or, colleges could become more like they once were, where humanities ruled and a good, broad exposure to the world, it's history and it's cultures were what was taught. Classes requiring creativity rather than technical prowess would be sought after. Holding a degree would show the person had several streams of thought from which to draw from.
It reminds me very much of the Steve Jobs speech I heard where he says that the college course he took that he credited most for his success was calligraphy.
Here's a couple of the shorter articles I've read lately about digital merit badges:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/business/digital-badges-may-highlight-job-seekers-skills.html?_r=3, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2012/01/26/the-end-of-the-diploma-as-we-know-it/
What do you think about these and what, if any, effect do you think they will have on education?
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