Badges/bsd/wiki

Introduction

Badge system design is rooted in understanding how badges come together to form a system. There are a variety of approaches and we're interested in cataloguing them all here. This wiki is the framework for building a toolkit to help people understand badge system design. This is where you come in: add your use cases, your definitions of terms, your techniques, your questions, etc.

Getting involved

There are several ways to get involved and give feedback on the standard:

• Add your content below!
• Join us for our regular research / system design calls
• Discuss badge system design on the Open Badges list
• Use the #badgesys hashtag

I have comments/questions/thoughts!

Given that this is a living document, there are bound to be questions and ideas that don't quite "fit" anywhere. This is the place for them! Use this area to inquire about shifting sections around, to think through what still is missing and where it might go, to respond to new sections, etc. It's the free-for-all space to capture the miscellaneous bits that don't seem to fit anywhere else.

Aspects of badge system design

System goals

There are many reasons for developing a badge system, let's use this spot to write down the goals of possible badge systems. Your goals may or may not be directly related to specific badges. What are yours? Specificity is important but if your badge system has multiple goals, please indicate that as well.

• Connect community
• Recognize contributions/achievements
• Help participants advertise their skills
• Consider how many badges is a good number for a system?

Lenses

There are a number of ways to look at a badge system. One is from the issuer standpoint, another is from the earner standpoint. Depending on which lens you're wearing, a badge system can look entirely different. A lens may reveal certain information about consideration requirements for possible audiences.

• issuing lens
  • individual issuer
  • organizational issuer
• earning lens
  • individual earner
  • social community
• sharing / displaying lens
  • consuming public
  • public at large

Funding

Many badge systems begin with external funding. Even if your badge system has internal funding to drive it, staffing, tech, and maintenance are significant funding considerations. In this section we'll investigate potential sources of funding as well as areas that need special funding considerations.

Funding considerations

• staff (building including writers, designers, assessment experts, content experts, etc.)
• tech
• maintenance

Sources of funding

• governmental
• philanthropic
• private / internal

Use cases

There are a variety of use cases that we're seeing in the badge system design world. Different from system goals, these define who might design badge systems.

Dan Hickey and his team of graduate students, Katerina Schenke and Cathy Tran, have investigated some options and you can read more about their work in this HASTAC blog post or the original post found on Dan's Remediating Assessment site. At a later date, we'll unpack them from that post and post here.

• Community recognition / development
• Academic advancement
• Professional development
• Endorsement

Personas

There are thousands of possible personas, let's consider them and how they might relate to use cases. Each system context will have its own combination of stakeholders.

• individuals
• organisations
• entities
• relationships
• (things that have definitive email addresses :-)

Tools + their uses

There are a number of tools being created to help people develop and implement badge systems. Here are a few that people have been kind enough to share with us. If you have additional tools, please include them below and indicate their use. As we add more, we'll begin to categorize them to ease discovery.

• Badge System Design worksheet
  • The Badge System Design worksheet is a google spreadsheet that prompts the designer to consider as many areas of a badge system as possible in the developmental stages. By reviewing it prior to building, it underscores many, if not all of the areas to be considered in the construction of a robust badge system.
• DigitalME Badge Design Canvas
  • The Badge Design Canvas seeks to simplify the process of developing a badge system by bringing it into the analogue world. This document is intended to be printed out and written upon. A brief encapsulation of important aspects of badge creation and design.
• Nate Otto's Design Principles Documentation card deck
  • The DPD card deck turns the building of a badge system into a type of game. By shuffling through the deck and selecting different cards, different areas of import can be investigated and addressed.
• Badg.us

Badge types

There are a number of badge types, let's consider what they are and how they might be used. Is there a default type of badge?

• attendance
• participation
• learning
• skill
• achievement
• affiliation

Levels

This needs to have context added. Not everyone needs to have levels.

• beginner
• intermediate
• advanced
• expert

Limits

Questions about meaning and value arise frequently in the development of badge systems. One possible response to this is to limit the total number of badges in your system. Alternatively, you can ignore limits and badge as appropriate. This area is ripe for discussion.

Badge criteria

Are there different ways to write about your content? Let's cover that here:

Alignments

Some badges may align with standards, some learning, some professional. This is the area to think through what those alignments might be.

Academic

• common core
• web literacy standard

Open Badges in the Web ecosystem

How do Open Badges exist beyond the Open Badges Infrastructure? How does/should the OBI be part of a larger ecosystem of web services in education, employment and life? This includes, but is not limited to, xAPI, LMS, HRMS, (Europass in Europe), etc.

Open Questions

Some of the questions that could affect current practice and future technical developments

Open Badges Asymmetry

Is it totally innocuous to keep a strict separation between badge issuers and badge recipients? Aren't we reinforcing existing power relationships (e.g. teacher/pupil)? What would be the benefits (and risks) to make it just as easy for learners to issue their own badges (or a group of learners)?

Open Badges as rewards (digital gold stars)

Research shows (c.f. Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn) that rewards and extrinsic motivators tend to wane intrinsic motivations (like the desire to learn), smother the desire to innovate or take risks. Rewards also tend to encourage conformity and promote subservient behaviours. How can we be sure that Open Badges are not used as glorified, up-to-date gold stars? How can we help those implementing and issuing badges to take into consideration this issue in their design and practice?

Research topics

Relevant badge system design research materials and summaries.

Licensing

Creative Commons considerations around badges materials and reuse.

Decoding

Questions about how to translate real-world expertise, experiences, into a coherent set of badges and pathways (e.g., how do i translate the things an expert knows and does into a coherent set of badges and pathways that a learner can follow on the road to expertise?)

• Decoding the Disciplines

Catalog of Issuers and Badge Systems

A database of badge issuers would be useful to the evolving ecosystem. The list below has been seeded from the list at http://openbadges.org/participating-issuers/. Add badge systems that you know of to the list below. See the list of common attributes to maintain consistency within the list. Some issuers will have just one badge system (a collection of badges that work together) and some will have many.

Some attribute values are preceded by tilde '~' to indicate that the value is a best guess based on available information. The badge issuers or others closely involved with the badge system should verify the content and update with a non-tilde value.

List of Issuers

4-H/USDA

Attribute	Value
Issuer Organization Name	4-H/USDA
Issuer Organization URL	http://www.fyflnet.org/4hbadges/
Non-profit?	~Yes
Badge System Name	4-H Digital Badges
Badge System URL	http://www.fyflnet.org/4hbadges/
Sample Badge Class Names	4-H Robot Hands, 4-H Lifelong Learner, 4-H Connected Learner
First Issue Date	~2012
Still Issuing?	Yes
Flies the Banner?	No
Principal Participant Domain	~4-H members
Language(s)	~English
Openness	~Unknown
License	~Unknown

Common Attributes

Issuer Organization Name

The name of the issuing organization. Should be the same as IssuerOrganization Name from the Assertion Specification https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Assertions.

Issuer Organization Description

A description of the issuing organization in the organizations own words usually taken from the organizations website.

Issuer Organization URL

The URL of the issuing organization. hould be the same as IssuerOrganization url from the Assertion Specification https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Assertions.

For profit?

Is the organization a for profit one?

Non-profit?

Is the organization a 501(c) organization?

Badge System Name

A name for a group of badges forming a system

Badge System URL

URL for the badge system.

Badge System Description

A short description of the badge system.

Sample Badge Class Names

A representative list of the badge types this issuer issues.

First Issue Date

When did the issuer first start issuing badges?

Still Issuing?

Is this issuer still actively issuing badges?

Number of badges issued

The number of badges issued in the format of "NNN as of DATE", example: "200 as of November 2013"

Flies the Banner?

Does the issuer's website use the "We issue Mozilla Open Badges banner?"

Category

What category would you put this issuer in? K-12 Education, University, Special Interest? (model needs expanding)

Age Group

What age group are the badges primarily meant? K-12, youth, adult, any, senior

Principal Participant Domain

All students of college X, Welders in the United States, Any Learner

Language(s)

What language are the badges in?

Openness

Are the badges open? Values to use are open, private.

License

What license are the badges under? CC, Public Domain, None