Assessment & Badges Report
Prepared by Chloe Varelidi

Overview

• Main focus has been on launching the School of Webcraft Webmaking101 Pilot
  • Worked closely with content expert to design curriculum for first round of challenges. http://pad.p2pu.org/webcraft-challenges
  • Created assessments and badges that are integrated within the challenge interface http://pad.p2pu.org/badge-directory
  • Created supporting materials for future challenge creators such as "what makes a good challenge" and "how to make one in 10 steps"http://chloeatplay.tumblr.com/
  • Integrated feedback into challenges from a small number of community members and experts.
  • Continued with infrastructure development for badges as part of the challenge interface
  • In the process of introducing agile development project management tools to help facilitate our workflow and communication

• Progress has been made in the "Assessing Deeper Learning in Social Learning Environments Online" paper by Nils Peterson, David Gibbs and Alex Halavais. Erin, Philipp and Chloe have been on the advisory group. The paper argues that an assessment structure that supports deeper learning in online social environments will:
  • Reveal the contours of the learning community. (a community of practice (CoP))
  • Provide internal and external validation of knowledge/skill. 
  • Have transparent, authentic artifacts of practice.
  • Develop assessment as a core skill
  • Create incentives for participation.
  • Support rich problems and learning tasks.
  • Embrace a diversity of autonomous learners.
  • Include mechanisms for its own evolution

Big wins

• We completed the first phase of the assessment and badge integration with the new challenge model and interface.
• Created more meaningful assessment and learning experiences by integrating badges and peer assessments more fully with the SoW progression. Planning for the larger badge roll out in 2012.
• Opportunity: connect the theory in the assessment paper with the design of new features at P2PU.
• Opportunity: test and get feedback on the new challenge model by having hands-on challenge creation workshops in Mobility Shifts and Drumbeat Festival.

Challenges

• In the Webmaking 101 first round of challenges the curriculum was targeted towards beginners and as a result we did not have that many skill- job related badges. In that context we developed more peer badges, with a focus on skills that promote peer to peer interaction such as the Helpful Feedback Badge and the Super Blogger Badge.
• We had to store in our backlog many ideas around new features that will support a better integration of badges in the challenge structure due to development priorities. There is an opportunity there to develop them further in next rounds.