Totara Launches Ground-Breaking Open Badges Functionality
Totara Learning Solutions, provider of the powerful packaged distribution of Moodle, released Totara LMS 2.4 today.
The release of Totara 2.4 means Totara and Moodle will be the world’s first Learning Management Systems to include Open Badges functionality. Last month Mozilla, the free software community, announced the release of Open Badges version 1.0. Mozilla’s Open Badges project aims to provide a technically smart, web savvy, open access framework whereby any organization can offer tangible recognition to learners who demonstrate achievement in a given area whether that be a soft or hard skill.
Over the past year more than 600 organisations, including Disney-Pixar and Nasa, have been creating and designing Badges. That number is about to increase exponentially with the release of Totara 2.4 and upcoming release of Moodle 2.5. Over 70 million users will have access to using Open Badges.
Totara Learning Solutions has developed a Badge issuing and management system for both Moodle and Totara LMS. Moodle is the most popular LMS in the world, with more users than any other learning platform. As of March 2013 it had a user base of close to 80,000 registered and verified sites, serving over 68 million users in over 7 million courses with 1.2 million plus teachers.[1]
Totara is Moodle’s corporate cousin, a distribution of Moodle designed specifically for the needs of workplace training as opposed to Moodle’s primary focus on the education sector. Totara is a mere two years old but already adds another two million users, including many government departments and health agencies, plus major corporations such as Vodafone, Sony, Safeway, Tesco and more.
Soon schools, colleges and universities will be issuing badges the world over. So too will community organisations, not-for profits, professional bodies, government departments and the many businesses which use Totara.
Richard Wyles, CEO of Totara Learning said, “The world needs this innovation. Modern economies are concerned about skill gaps at the same time as having entrenched unemployment. Open badges heralds an exciting future. As well as the education environment, employers will soon be issuing badges, and we believe some badges will gain recognition quickly because merit from credible organisations has currency. Badges will emerge which focus on the specific skills employers are looking for. Taking our own recruitment processes as an example; badges for collaboration, innovation, client focus, and PHP skills would trump a generic computer science degree. By integrating new badge functionality into Moodle and Totara, educators and employers now have access to practical low-cost solutions which recognise and reward learners with more precision, flexibility and portability…. Totara 2.4 and the upcoming release of Moodle is a game-changer.”
In addition to Open Badges, Totara 2.4 introduces a number of further enhancements including evidence tabs for Learning Plans, multiple Learning Plan templates, improvements to the Face-to-face module, enhancements to the HR Synchronisation module, and improvements to the Report Builder. It also incorporates the benefits of features in Moodle 2.3 and Moodle 2.4.