Case Study: PASA’s Open Badges

Two years ago, the MacArthur Foundation teamed up with Mozilla to issued a challenge to the education community: Design new forms of learning pathways that utilize digital badges as their “accreditation.” Organizations and institutions from around the world responded with their pitches and convened at the Digital Media and Learning Competition at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

PASA’s badges for credit-bearing high school expanded learning opportunities through the Hub was one of the winners, and with the initial pilot of our badges initiative complete, Mozilla and HASTAC have issued this case study of our work. Published by Reconnect Learning, it covers PASA’s key successes, lessons learned, and next steps for the digital badge system we created for our Hub Expanded Learning Opportunities (ELOs).