In the digital age learners have abundant and diverse possibilities to engage in open learning to reach their personal, social, academic and work-related goals. Open Learners can participate in Open Courses (e. g. MOOCs) and use Open Resources (e. g. OER), but they also need tools to recognise and communicate their open learning achievements. Open Badges based on an Open Standard by Mozilla support learners in getting their open learning recognised and documented as Open Credentials. Open Badges are a disruptive technology which allows learners to aggregate learning achievements and evidence of learning from multiple sources in a portable, shareable and verifiable format. Learners can earn Open Badges for certain skills and attach self-selected evidence by collating artefacts from different learning contexts. In this way, the skill/competency is the focus of open credentialing. So far there has been little awareness and discussion about Open Badges in Open Education communities. as well as little attention from policy stakeholders. Open Badges, however, have been supported by a number of initiatives and organisations around the world, such as Mozilla Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, Badge Alliance and IMS Global in the USA, Deakin University in Australia, CanCred in Canada and others. In Europe, the Open Badge Network strategic partnership founded by the Erasmus+ program has been dedicated to promoting Open Badges to recognise life-long and life-wide learning. One of the key endeavours has been to formulate policy recommendations for Open Credentialing with Open Badges. This presentation introduces Open Badges as a disruptive credentialing technology and discusses the role of Open Badges for Open Education. The discussion is based on the results of the policy research conduced by Open Badge Network. The presentation ends with policy recommendations for enhancing the worldwide uptake of Open Badges for Open Education.
