MIRVA for Cineca: a chance to imagine how to enable recognition (with technology)

by Chiara Carlino, MIRVA’s project manager for Cineca

Cineca is a consortium of 66 italian university and its mission is centered around providing technology to universities: technology for research (high performance computing), technology for administrative processes, technology for learning. Enabling a process through technology is nowadays basically the same as social engineering: it means enabling a process in society. So, what new processes does our society need in the context of education?  

Starting with 2009 the need for a more inclusive flexible and easy process of recognition appeared clearly in global tendencies, in european guidelines and in italian law. As technology provider, Cineca searched for a technical solution and found Open Badges: this is how Bestr was born: the italian open badge based platform meant to highlight the value of competencies however they are acquired, in lifelong and lifewide learning, and to help bridge the gap between education and work.

In the perspective of enabling a recognition process capable of complementing the existing (formal) learning process with comparable importance e value, the work to be done in MIRVA is essential: MIRVA is going to find out what is needed for proper open and trustful recognition, it is going to identify what is needed by the different actors that can benefit from a more open and just recognition, and it is going to propose solutions to enable such processes leveraging Open Badges 2.0.