reward your staff for learning: a guide to open badges

Reward your staff for learningAn introduction to the new Open Badges function to Totara LMS

An introduction to the new Open Badges function to Totara LMS

Reward your staff for learning

Telephone: 01535 604026 [email protected] / www.webanywhere.co.uk

With some of the world’s largest multi-nationals, such as Logica, Vodafone, Sony and Safeway now using Totara LMS, innovation has become a core value for Totara. Now, the latest feature to be added to Totara LMS is Open Badges: A flexible, more visible way to reward staff.

The Open Badges project was co-funded by the Mac Arthur Foundation and Mozilla, famous for developing the Firefox web browser which one quarter of the world’s population are now using. The aim of the project was to enhance recognition of learning and motivate students and employees alike through the rewarding of ‘badges.’

Open Badges are a simple idea: Through learning achievements, both practical and theoretical, employees can be rewarded with them. Each badge contains metadata - information regarding the achievement - when the badge was awarded, what for and who by. For example, a yellow badge with thumbs up may symbolise an employee with excellent customer service skills. This is a visual signpost of how qualified a workforce is, and also helps to illustrate the skillset for each individual employee. Open Badges can be posted and viewed anywhere the employer, or employee, wishes.

Introduction

Blended learning programmes are commonly adopted by many corporates - and this is currently on the increase; in fact, most organisations have at least experienced e-learning at some stage. However, these haven’t always been good experiences, and, according to recent statistics, many executives do not feel they are receiving the return on investment from their e-learning projects that they would like. Open Badges is a feature that can profoundly change the influence and effectiveness of a learning platform within a business.

Where are we now?




Jenny is a mid-level employee. She works as part of the sales team in one of the largest retail companies in the UK selling consumer goods. Along with her sales role, she is studying at a local business school as she is keen to develop her managerial skills. The first year of her studies is funded, but after this year she will lose the funding. Given Jenny does not have the funds, she will have to stop her studies and pursue her career.

At work, Jenny has recently had her performance review. This was a quick ten minute discussion with her Team Leader. The problem is, she is constantly short of target as when she sells an item she fails to also bundle the warranty for the product which is what her line manager would like her to do. Therefore, the overall judgement is that Jenny is ‘underperforming.’ Given the performance review is mainly results based, Jenny’s team leader has failed to realise when the store is quiet she will use the computer on the shop floor to access the Learning Management System (LMS). She is often seen accessing the LMS as she is very ambitious and really loves learning. In fact, Jenny is the top scorer in sales, customer services and even stock control within the store. However, Jenny is not considered to be a top performer. The retail company’s Head of Learning and Development, Nicola, worked with the Talent Manager, Paul, on possible concepts to improve their e-learning strategy. They looked at proprietary systems to plug into their LMS and other tools to manage talent spotting and career development programmes. One day, Paul spotted the Open Badges functionality. Luckily, he was able to plug this into their LMS, quickly and efficiently. The project was carefully designed to ensure that all 100 stores’ learning programmes were linked effectively to the Open Badges infrastructure.

Back at the store, Jenny continued to take the e-learning courses within the LMS. It was clear after a few weeks that she was developing much faster than the others. Her Store Manager developed a competition to see how many badges employees could achieve in one month, and the prize was a restaurant voucher. Jenny came top of the leader board and won the voucher; not only was the Store Manager able to see Jenny’s potential but her peers began to work closely with Jenny, learning from her excellent customer services and the way she managed difficult situations. Back at Head Office, Paul and Nicola began to use the Open Badges tool for data mining. They immediately spotted Jenny’s development at the store and were able to map a better career path for her on the customer services desk.

Through Nicola and Paul’s analysis at the Head Office of talent within the workforce, Jenny was promoted to Customer Services Team Leader. She then had sufficient funds to continue her studies.

Open Badges in the workplace: A story

The current creative economy is utilising the power of technology, allowing organisations to grow and develop in a collaborative manner. The traditional economy ideology was very much ‘top down’ where employees were told what to do. Now, through the use of technologies, the creative economy is embracing a ‘bottom up’ approach in the workplace.

The new ‘Creative Economy’

Open BadgesEcosystem

Capturing learningachievements

Supports innovation in the creative economy




Using Open Badges, employees will be incentivised to develop themselves and share this with their peers within the learning ecosystem. Employees will be able to quickly identify peers with similar skill sets, man-agers will be able to see who can support their projects and stakeholders will be able to spot talent.

Organisations will also have the opportunity to link their Open Badges ecosystem to LinkedIn, which is the most widely-used business social network globally. This will enable their brand and the competency of their workforce to be identified by their clients, thus enforcing their presence in the market and creating a better brand.

The Open Badges benefits

Motivates the workforce

Achievement signalling

Reputation building

Community building




As we see from the above story, Open Badges will provide endless benefits to our organisations.

Capturing Learning Achievements - through the use of badges, core competencies of employees will be captured and recorded and held within a single learning record

The Open Badges Benefits

Want to learn more?Why not give Webanywhere a call - on 01535 604026

Achievement Signalling - management and executives will be able to identify pools of talent and specialists quickly and easily

Motivating the workforce - badges will provide employees with recognition of their learning whilst motivating them to achieve more!

Supporting Innovation - workforces will be motivated to work with those with similar badges to develop themselves and therefore innovating within the company. Furthermore, development of the social community will foster and promote collaboration

Reputation Building - those who are developing their competencies within the company will be identified and their reputation within the business will become known (like Jenny!)

Community Building - the Open Badges functionality will enable a wider community within the learning ecosystem of your company

Webanywhere is a Moodle and Platinum Totara LMS partner. We specialise in delivering online e-learning portals and content development. Our customers include Dominos Pizza, Zara and the British Safety Council.

stretch beyond

The future of course management

Webanywhere specialises in learning technologies that enable the concepts described in this paper, and stretch the learning potential of an organisation’s most important asset - its people.To discuss social learning, multi tenancy or the effective implementation of a learning management system in your organisation, contact our workplace learning team on 01535 604026, or email [email protected].

© Webanywhere Limited 2013. All Rights Reserved.

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reward your staff for learning: a guide to open badges

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