One of the discussions I was particularly excited about at the Barcelona Drumbeat Festival was using badges to indicate certain skills, abilities, capacities, traits, or accomplishments. The idea here is what you might find in Boy Scout merit badges, or Foursquare badges, or Stack Overflow badges: a quick way to see what a person knows, can do, and identifies themselves with.
As part of my courses in the coming semester, I am abandoning standard grades and instead using badge-level assessments. As part of each course, students can earn any number of badges for demonstrated abilities. These are generally badges that require you to show that you can do something. That ability must be assessed–often by peers.
Starting with the “data” end, what kind of information must a badge hold? We talked through a lot of this in Barcelona, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it since. What appears below shouldn’t be seen as the consensus of that group–though I found the discussion valuable, a number of the items below are certainly not commonly agreed upon among those, e.g., at P2PU who are talking about badges. At a basic level, a badge should be transparent (everything that went into getting the badge should be as visible as possible), and it should be imbued with the authority and reputation of those who were the evaluators.
Process
First, I should briefly describe the process. In the first courses, this process will largely be implemented “manually,” but you will see that there are many opportunities to automate some of these processes.
1. A person is nominated (or nominates themselves) by filling out all of the information on a form except for the endorsements.
2. Endorsers go to the form and indicate whether they feel that the candidate qualifies, for those that require endorsements–some may not. Note that “bots” may act as the endorsers, and check automatically whether something has occurred. In that case they behave just like human endorsers. Note also that the system that records this application should in some way verify the identity of the endorsers. We won’t be do that initially, but eventually, something (e.g., OpenID check) should provide an indication that people are who they say they are.
3. Once the endorsements are complete, a person may put this badge wherever they like on the web, with a link back to the page to show that they have earned the badge.
Nomination / Evidence Form
So, what is on that form? (With * items required.)
1. Name of the badge*
A short description of what the badge signifies: e.g., “Javascript Expert.” If it is a bootstrap badge, this should be clearly indicated in the title: e.g., “Javascript Expert [bootstrap]” (see #9 below).
2. Issuer of the badge*
Eventually, this may be something like “School of Webcraft” or “Quinnipiac University.” For this initial round, it is likely to be “ICM” for the ones I am doing.
3. Version of this badge*
Date-time last updated the badge.
A unique ID for the badge is formed with #1/#2/#3, e.g., Quinnipiac University/Ph.D. in Social Computing/2011-12-25-7:00:00.
4. Badge Image*
For the purposes of standardization, I will say 250x250px PNG representing what the badge stands for.
5. Description
A textual description of what the badge represents. The idea is that it is reasonably brief–say, less than 200 words.
6. Recipient*
Who is it that is claiming the badge.
7. Nominator*
Who is it that nominated this person for the badge?
By default, any badge can be self-nominated. If for some reason you want to exclude this possibility, it could be listed as a requirement in section 9: E.g. “Candidate is nominated by someone other than themselves” or “Candidate may only be nominated by a member of the track team.”
8. When nominated*
Nomination timestamp.
9. Requirements & Evidence
This is the meat of the form. It includes 0 or more requirements, with links to evidence that those requirements were met. Each requirement includes a record like the following:
a) Textual description of the rubric for assessment. What needs to be shown, and how is an evaluator to decide whether it meets the standard. Outside examples may be linked, including former examples of successful badge earners.
b) Textual description or link to the evidence of assessment. (If a link, we’ll probably need to find a way to archive that link for posterity. Easier with some things than with others; e.g., video.)
c) Nominator’s comments on the work and why they think it qualifies.
d) Qualifications to endorse. For example, you might require that people have the badge they are endorsing, or that they have a badge that qualifies them as “instructors” in the skill (e.g., to get the “pilot” badge, you need to be endorsed by at least one person with the “pilot inspektor” badge, or to get a a QU-PhD badge you need endorsements from three people with the QU-Faculty badge). You might also require that people have a badge that verifies their identity. So if I have the Verisignature–ReallyMe badge, maybe it qualifies me to endorse more badges. C is a list of required badges–there may be more than one.
e) Number of qualified endorsers required. This could be zero or a thousand.
f) List of
1. Endorser name
2. Date of endorsement
3. Comments on endorsement
Note that there is a necessary and automatic exception here in the case where there do not exist in the world the number of qualified endorsers listed in D. In that case, you must be endorsed by as many qualified endorsers as currently exist. It is then clearly indicated that the badge is a [BOOTSTRAP]. At some future point you might want to re-try the badge to get a non-bootstrapped version, once there are enough potential endorsers.
10. Issued Date-Time* (or PENDING)
11. Expires Date-Time
12. Recipient’s Comments & Notes
13. List of community comments
An Example Badge Template / Form
Now certain elements of the above are part of the template of a badge. So, if I nominated someone for the “Good Discussion Summarizer” I would end up with a template that included:
“Good Discussion Summarizer”
The Human Fund
1999-8-14-09:00:00
[Some Cool Badge Art that I don’t have time to dummy up at the moment]
The good discussion summarizer is issued to someone who has demonstrated that she is consistently capable of summarizing a brainstorming or other discussion in an academic setting, both verbally and textually.
Recipient:
Nominator: Alex Halavais (2010-12-2-18:55:03)
Badge Requirements, Evidence, and Endorsements
1. Statements from three members of courses in which the recipient is enrolled attesting to her abilities to accurately summarize materials. Endorser must hold the “current student” badge. (No evidence beyond the endorsements required.)
Evidence: (NB: this would be left blank.)
Endorser:
Comments:
Endorser:
Comments
Endorser:
Comments:
2. Evaluation of a video of the candidate reviewing a discussion. Endorser must hold the “Good Discussion Summarizer” badge.
Evidence (Link to video or audio of summarization):
Endorser:
Comments:
3. Evaluation of a textual summary of the same discussion. Endorser must hold the “Good Discussion Summarizer” badge.
Evidence (Link or Pasted Text of a summary):
Endorser:
Comments:
Issued: PENDING
Expires: TBD
Candidate comments:
Community comments:
The nominator would fill out some of these, including, perhaps, being one of the endorsers.
Other Issues
The natural question is how would endorsers know to find the form? There are lots of possibilities here, including informal or direct invitations, and a queue of badge candidates needing assessment. But that is a solution that does not have to exist in the badge process itself (necessarily). The idea is to keep this piece as simple and light as possible.
Happy to hear any thoughts you might have. As I said, I’m going to take it for a test run in the Spring semester. I’ll likely just have people do it manually on the wiki, unless I find time over the break to code a simple form system that can handle the pieces. And I’ll point to the course and the badge description (as well as some of the early badges) as I write them up.
As a final note, this doesn’t in any way take away from the efforts of the Mozilla Badge Backpack approach. Indeed, one of the advantages to that system is that it might provide the opportunity for several dissimilar badge systems to work together. In this case, what would be passed along to the Backpack is just an image of the badge, its name, and a link back to the form that demonstrates how it was earned.
Another non-course
Chatting with the program director tonight over dinner, I discovered that my “Locative and Mobile” course is unlikely to “make”–just not enough student interest. This despite efforts to poll the students and move toward something they wanted. Really disappointing, since this was the course I was most looking forward to working on next semester. Luckily, I know now and can stop planning. I now have a bunch of electronic bits, however, that I’m not going to get to use in the course. I will have to use them to build a robot to teach my other courses, I guess.
So, down the oubliette with the beginnings of my syllabus:
Mobile and locative applications
This is a course designed to make you think about the world as a place that is Internet-enabled, and give you some of the skills you need to design for that world. What does it mean to work and play in a mobile world and how does this relate to designing and building applications based on places and interfaces that go beyond the mouse and keyboard?
This course is offered in a peer-based studio format. As part of this course, you are expected not only to learn how to do new things, and demonstrate your ability to do those things, you are also expected to create materials that teach others how to do something new.
This course organizer is Alex Halavais. He is an associate professor in the interactive communication program at Quinnipiac University. More information can be found on his blog: https://alex.halavais.net
Course Meetings
The course is scheduled to meet Tuesdays from 6:30 to 9:10. In addition, there will be open studio hours from 4:30 to 6:30 on Tuesdays, in the great room at 430 Mt. Carmel Avenue. You are expected to spend the required hours on the course, but the time spent physically in the classroom/studio is flexible.
Course Communication
There are three main ways we will communicate as a group. The instructional material, badge requirements, and any other course documents will be kept at the course wiki at XXX. We will also be using a mailing list, hosted by Google Groups. Please go to XXX to join the group.
Social Contract
When you sign on as a participant of this course, you promise to:
* Be timely in your interactions with the community. If a week goes by, and we haven’t heard from you, something has gone wrong. If you can be with us physically in the hack sessions, that is best; if you cannot, we should hear from you virtually at least weekly. When it comes to responding to questions relating to the learning objects you design, or asking for evaluation for a badge you have designed, you should be especially quick in responding. I would like you to be willing to respond to requests for evaluation within 72 hours, and I will endeavor to do the same.
* Be here to learn. I know, many of you have a degree to earn, and a job market to wrangle, and the like. However, the purpose of this course is to form a learning community. That’s what is the most important thing for me, and if it isn’t the most important thing for you, please choose another course.
* Be willing to teach. This is a community, and I expect you to contribute to the learning of your fellow participants. I applaud your sponginess, but please honor the community by being willing to help your fellow classmates, and not just take what you can from it. This is particularly true for the badges you author, but across the board, I hope that you are willing to pitch in, answer questions, and help where you are able to do so.
* Strive to acquire the minimal skill set detailed below. That is, acquire the five necessary badges and at least five of the substantial skill badges.
As the organizer of this course, I promise to endeavor to embody those principles in my own work during the semester.
Badges
You may have already noted some talk about a badge system. Basically, badges indicate your skills and abilities. If you have ever gotten a Boy Scout merit badge, or been SCUBA certified, or gotten a driving license, or won a Foursquare badge, you already have a rough idea of what a badge is.
For the purposes of this course, we will be focused on badges for particular skills. For example, one of the badges I expect you to earn is the MediaWiki Editor Basic Concepts badge. To do that, you have to demonstrate that you understand how to do some basic things with the markup syntax of MediaWiki. When you submit evidence of having accomplished these tasks, a number of endorsers will acknowledge that you have accomplished earning the badge, and you will be able to show the badge on your home page on the wiki, or anywhere else you choose to do so.
There is an early tutorial on how to earn a badge and how to create your own badges. Anyone can create a badge for anything, and some time during the semester, you will create your own badge.
There are two lists of badges that you should take special note of on the wiki: the “necessary” badges and the “substantive” badges. These are badges that we agree as a community are required for the course, in the first instance, and that represent significant and substantial skills in the area of locative or mobile media in the second instance. If I agree that a badge and associated learning materials are particularly strong, I will add them to the approved “substantive” list.
Expectations, Grading, and Credit
Everyone who enrolls in the course is expected to endeavor to complete all the necessary badges (five) and at least five of the substantial badges, regardless of the way in which they are engaged in the course.
This course is offered for three graduate academic credits at Quinnipiac University as ICM500. If you are not an interactive communications graduate student and would like to enroll for credit, please contact Phillip Simon about arranging to take the course as a non-matriculating student.
As an experiment, this course is also being offered at Peer2Peer University, an open structure for engaging in peer learning online.
I don’t believe the A-F grading system is an effective way of engaging learning or providing feedback. For this reason, anyone who completes the minimum requirements at QU will receive an A in the course.
First, you must complete the following five necessary badges:
* M&L Apps Social Contract Signatory Badge
* MediaWiki Editor Basic Concepts Badge
* Helpful Colleague Badge
* Basic Open Learning Resource Creator Badge
* Badge User and Maker Badge
In addition you are expected to earn a minimum of five substantive badges during the semester. These represent some knowledge, skill, ability, or experience involving mobile or locative media. For example, if your create a piece of hardware that can tweet to the web when something happens in the physical world, you would earn the Basic Sensors badge. In each case, the evidence required to earn the badge can be accomplished by completing materials in the unit(s) associated with the badge.
The initial set of substantive badges include:
* Mobile Web Standards
* Mobile UX
* Kiosk Planning & Design
* Geocaching and Collaborative Mapping
* Geocoded Web
* Google Maps
* 7Scenes Basics
* Basic AppInventor
* AppInventor Web Services
* Blinky Lights (using Audrino)
* Basic Sensors for the Web
It is expected that you will complete the required badges within the time period of the course. Because most badges require endorsements from your peers, continuing beyond the agreed period of the course is impossible. For this reason, incompletes will not be granted. Likewise, if you have not completed a substantial number of badges, including all of the necessary badges, by the midpoint of the semester, you will receive an email from the instructor recommending you withdraw from the course.
Schedule
As a studio course, this class does not have a schedule as such. However, you are required to complete the Social Contract and MediaWiki Editor badges before moving on to more substantial badges. You are also required to complete all five necessary badges before the midpoint of the semester (for QU students).
Beyond those constraints, you are welcome to engage the material as you like. There are many factors that may influence your choices. For example, you may need to order a book or hardware to effectively complete a badge, and that may take some time to arrive. Likewise, although Google claims a one-week turn-around on AppInventor accounts, if you plan on creating an Android-based app, you should probably apply for that account right now, with the knowledge that it will be at least a week (if not longer).
For work that requires outdoor activities, you may want to wait to later in the semester, or for a warm spell, if you are local to Connecticut.
Also, doing things together is more fun. So, I hope you will chose to work in tandem on projects. Each individual is charged with creating their own evidence for a badge, but if you prefer to collaborate while learning working through the learning units, I strongly encourage it. Particularly for doing things that are community-based, working in a group can be a significant multiplier, and it may be possible to demonstrate work on a communal object.
Texts & expenses
Each badge requires you know how to do something. Materials needed to learn how to do this will be assembled on the course wiki. They may draw from open access materials out on the web, or they be entirely original. Each person who creates a badge should assemble the materials necessary for people to learn the skills represented in the badge.
While these need not be original in all cases–curated materials are fine–at least once during the semester, you must create original, open access materials that teach us how to do something in the mobile and locative realms.
It is important, whether curating materials or creating your own materials to respect authors licenses, copyright, and intellectual rights.
You are going to need web space to host some of the projects in this course–feel welcome to use whatever space works and is appropriate to the need. Likewise, as you are creating your own materials, you will may find that the most current and accessible materials are actually available in books. Libraries can be slow in acquiring such books, so you may find yourself purchasing technical books (or camping out at your local bookstore).
Some of the badges require access to particular hardware or software. A preference will be shown for free and open software, when available, but even open hardware often has an expense associated with it. (I will have a limited amount of hardware you can play with in our physical meetings.) Enough badges will be available that it should be possible to avoid such hardware or licensing expenses, but I hope small expenses won’t dissuade you from learning experiences.
Finally, I do encourage you to collaborate with others in the class to assemble these resources. An Audrino board or electronics kit can be shared among multiple people, as long as you are careful with it, and likewise other resources can be effectively shared.
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