CALL FOR PAPERS - EXTENDED SUBMISSION DEADLINE (January 23)

2nd International Workshop on Open Badges in Education (OBIE 2015): From Learning Evidence to Learning Analytics

- https://sites.google.com/site/obie2015ws/ -

=) in conjunction with the 5th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK'15), Poughkeepsie, New York, USA, March 16-20, 2015 (http://lak15.solaresearch.org/)


IMPORTANT DATES
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* 23 January 2015: Paper submission deadline (EXTENDED)
* 02 February 2015: Notification of acceptance
* 16 February 2015: Camera-ready paper
* 16 March 2015: OBIE2015 Workshop


OVERVIEW
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Open digital badges are Web-enabled tokens of learning and accomplishment. Unlike traditional grades, certificates, and transcripts, Open Badges (OBs) include specific claims about learning accomplishments and detailed evidence in support of those claims. The thinking and negotiations that go into deciding what claims and evidence to include in badges often result in highly credible and valuable information about the accomplished learning.

Considering the richness of data associated with OBs - (meta)data stored in badges themselves, primarily requirements, achievement evidence and timestamps, as well as data about learning pathways followed by students (i.e., learning traces) - it is reasonable to expect a very powerful predictive element at the intersection of OBs and Learning Analytics. The data associated with OBs might offer highly valuable input not only to predict what may be a good fit for the next learning activity, but perhaps even what a learner is capable of in a certain timeframe. This fertile ground could have substantial implications for recommending and exposing students to a variety of curricular and co-curricular pathways utilizing data sources far more nuanced than grades and achievement tests.

AUDIENCE
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OBs connect educational providers and practitioners, entrepreneurs, and researchers in discourses on teaching, learning, assessment, digital credentials, and digital education in general. While preserving its general focus on opportunities and challenges associated with OBs, this 2nd installment of the OBIE workshop will be primarily intended for those interested in the intersection of OBs and Learning Analytics. This intersection includes gathering, integration, and analysis of data and resources associated with OBs, with the ultimate aim of providing teachers, learners and other stakeholders in the ever-increasing OBs ecosystem with informative and relevant feedback, and predictive functions. Participants in the workshop will be exposed to presentations and discussions on the position and role of digital badges in instructional design, on compelling data and analytics challenges and opportunities that the OB infrastructures open for the Learning Analytics field, and on different types and designs of OB systems and their potential to impact the future of education.


TOPICS OF INTEREST
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The workshop would welcome submissions from the following (though not restrictive) list of topics:
* Challenges and opportunities associated with the use of Learning Analytic methods and techniques in the domain of OBs.
* Different kinds of feedback for teachers and students that could be generated based on the data and resources associated with OBs.
* Leveraging learners' badge-earning pathways as means of i) assisting badge issuers in improving their instructional design, and ii) scaffolding learners' reflection over the learning process.
* How different kinds of badges - e.g., participatory badges vs. assessment-based badges - impact learners' engagement in disciplinary discourse?
* Intersection of OBs and the recent initiatives to open and share analytics data - how openness and visibility affect the functionality of badges as a motivator of behaviour?
* Combined use of OBs with other recent education-oriented initiatives (e.g., xAPI, LRMI), to allow for a greater insight into to evidence associated with badges.
* Examining learning pathways that emerge in large scale OBs efforts like the seven-city Cities of Learning in 2014.
* Using semantic technologies to i) analyze evidence contained in digital badges, ii) allow for a comparison and alignment of badges issued by different organizations, and iii) interpret the meaning of a collection of heterogeneous badges.


SUBMISSIONS
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We welcome the following types of contributions:

* Demonstration abstracts (up to 2 pages)
* Short research papers (up to 5 pages)
* Full research papers (up to 10 pages).

All submissions must be written in English and formatted according to the ACM Proceedings format (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates).

Please submit your contributions electronically in PDF format at

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=obie2015

All the submissions will go through a blind peer-review process. Submissions will be evaluated according to their significance, originality, technical content, style, clarity, and relevance to the workshop.

At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to attend the workshop.

All accepted workshop papers will be published in a separate volume of CEUR proceedings.


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
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* Daniel Hickey, Indiana University, USA
* Jelena Jovanovic, University of Belgrade, Serbia
* Steven Lonn, University of Michigan, USA
* James E. Willis, Indiana University, USA


PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
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* Samuel Abramovich, University at Buffalo
* June Ahn, University of Maryland
* Vladan Devedzic, University of Belgrade
* Dragan Gasevic, Athabasca University
* Sheryl Grant, Duke University
* Mart Laanpere, Tallinn University
* Rudy McDaniel, University of Central Florida
* Ivana Mijatovic, University of Belgrade
* Jose Luis Santos Odriozola, KU Leuven
* Abelardo Pardo, University of Sydney
* Elvira Popescu, University of Craiova
* R?zvan Rughini?, University Politehnica of Bucharest
* Adolfo Ruiz, Tallinn University
* Felicia M. Sullivan, Tufts University

For further questions please contact the organisers via
*** obie2015[at]easychair[dot]org ***