Online Learning Update

Pearson, the publishing heavyweight that now calls itself “the world’s leading learning company,” announced on Thursday that it would follow Mozilla’s creation last year of an open standard for badges that recognize educational or professional achievement by offering a proprietary badge platform based on Mozilla’s standards. For the new platform, which Pearson is calling Acclaim, the company will “work with academic institutions and high-stakes credentialing organizations to offer diplomas, certificates, and other professional credentials as Open Badges.” The badges, Pearson said, will complement “a paper-based representation of a credential by providing proof of an earner’s achievement in a web-enabled format that can be validated quickly and easily.”