Assessment & Badges Coordinator
This position builds on work started by P2PU and Mozilla, and connects different areas of research and development:
- The School of Webcraft is a joint venture between Mozilla and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) to create a grassroots learning community focused on standards based web development. See more detail at etherpad.mozilla.org:9000/webcraft-charter.
- One of the key questions to answer in order to scale SoW is, "What are the skills that are important for webdevelopers, and how do we assess them in social learning environments like P2PU, in a way that leads to issuing of badges?"
- Mozilla is driving the development of an open badges / accreditation architecture, where badges act as credentials that can be shared by users. P2PU Is developing new ways of open assessment for social learning environments, that take advantage of web technology. For both of these interests, School of Webcraft provides the pilot setting to develop concrete implementations.
Key goals of this position:
- Develop concrete tools and processes to assess webdeveloper skills in P2PU / Mozilla School of Webcraft.
- Inform the higher level work on assessment and badge infrastructure based on experience in the pilot.
Responsibilities
- (1) Lead drafting of a position paper on badges infrastructure (with input from Ruth Schmidt, Philipp Schmidt, Mark Surman, and others)
- (2) Lead development of assessment processes and tools for a few webdeveloper skills in School of Webcraft. Design assessments and lead development of prototypes that can lead to issuing of badges.
- Help articulate and communicate the vision for our work on badges / assessment / infrastructure (help tell the story via blogs, mailing lists, etc.)
Logistics:
- The position might require occasional travel to conferences or workshops, including at least one confirmed event organized by the SSRC/ MacArthur in New York on 31 Jan, and 1 Feb 2011. Travel expenses are provided separately.
- Position reports to Philipp Schmidt
- Duration: 15 Nov 2010 - 15 May 2011
- Full time
Milestones:
- (1) Position Paper
- First rough draft by 29 Nov
- (2) School of Webcraft Assessments & Badges
- 29 Nov 2010: Finalise selection of 2 skills for pilot assessments together with Pippa
- At least one hard skill, and one soft skill; ideally one formative (motivating participation) and one summative (signaling achievement/competency) assessment
- 17 Dec 2010: First draft (finalise by 22nd Dec 2010) of mock-up/verbal description of how these skills would be assessed, with rough design of technology needed to support it
- 19 Jan 2011: Developers to deliver first version of implementation (Erin and Philipp to manage)
- 26 Jan 2011 / Next round of courses starts
- Add more skill assessments that could lead ot issuing of badges, based on experience in January round of courses
- A way to understand the success of the badges. This could be done in a number of ways, including a survey with participants. We will make a decision on how to achieve this once we have defined the skills and assessments.
- April 2011 - Following round of courses starts: Additional skills added
===== Additional detail (not necessary for contract): =====
Weekly calls (with small group of other people):
- Pippa
- Tech person
- Philipp
- Mark (occasionally)
- Potentially Ahrash, Alex, Ruth?
Notes on Position Paper:
- foundational piece that we can give to anyone interested in badges
- friendly + concrete (w/o going to deep into research, theory, etc)
- Who is the audience?
- internally - getting support at Mozilla, P2PU, MacArthur
- researchers/educators that are interested in partnering/hooking in (should be concrete enough)
- What are the sections?
- big picture / radical change
- minimum specs that we are building (what does it look like, what are different pieces, how do they fit together)
- what are the things we don't know yet
- what are the next steps
- who do we want involved
Background Resources / Previous work: