ABSTRACT
One of the biggest challenges facing the badging community is an overall lack of rigor in the quality of badging systems, stemming from a misunderstanding of the basic concepts of assessment, credentialing, and the signaling benefits of a credential. In this chapter we discuss the concept of lightweight versus heavyweight badges and explain the argument for lightweight badges along with our counter argument. We then present proposals for how to strengthen the rigor of the badging systems we all use in an attempt to increase the meaningfulness of open badges to end users.
