Project Title: Badges
Kick-off Call
== Agenda ==
(PS:) Added names of the people who I thought would be in the best position to give an update or lead discussion of the different agenda items.
Get everyone on the same page
- Badges related projects (Philipp)
- Got funding for a badges working group (MacFound/SSRC)
- White paper (Mozilla/P2PU/MacFound) -... link
- Pilot (osqa - http://badges.p2pu.org) - stand alone badge issuer
- School of Webcraft
- Erin product manager
- Zuzel developer
- Source code: https://github.com/p2pu/osqa-badges
- login to badges.p2pu.org was disabled after badges were integrated to p2pu (after berlin 2011)
- Webmaking 101 - stand alone badge issuering, but attached to challenges
- Development work (Zuzel)
- Completed
- http://pad.p2pu.org/p/new-badges -- this contains the terms we are using now for the kind of badges we support
- Currently in progress / not finished
- Recently Dirk started working on providing an UI based on the info we ask from organizers to create badges (http://pad.p2pu.org/p/new-badges) but it was put on hold since we need a clear spec of what it is needed.
- Currently badge creation needs involvement of developer
- Planned - add links to trello board / specs
- OpenBadges.org status (Zuzel)
- What it means for P2PU to issue a badge
- What is the logic used to issue badges?
Question:
- PS: Is there an overview of all the badges that are currently issued / supported on p2pu.org?
- DU: How are we currently hosting the evidence for badges?
- PS: How can other organizations endorse badges hosted on P2PU
- http://weblog.lonelylion.com/2012/05/07/super-awesome-badge-summer/ - see "Endorsement, public key infrastructure, federated backpacks"
- School of Data:
- P2PU is the issuer / OKFN is the authority
- Not currently supporting authority in the API
- In the meantime include authority in the evidence URL (should state that badge was issued by P2PU with OKFN as authority on the evidence page)
- VG: Did users understand the difference between different kinds of badges?
- ZVP: Not sure
- Survey results ... include link (Philipp todo)
- VG: Are there sustainability concerns about having many different kinds of badges?
- PS: Not just sustainability issues, but tech implementation, UX, etc ...
Overview / Goals of funded projects (Philipp)
- Expectations / requirements of the different projects
- Hewlett > assessment, linking formal & informal certification efforts (incl. badges)
- May 2011 - April 2013 (extension likely)
- DML > badge issuer platform
Other projects underway related to badges:
- School of Data
- Open Knowledge Foundation
- Focused on data wrangling skills
- Interested in offering courses and certification as a way to build sustainbility for School of Data
- School of Open
- Creative Commons
- Licensing, but all things open potentially
- School of Ed
- Individuals interested in issuing badges (example on mailing list)
Questions:
- Are badges a certificate that will get you a job or a "cute" signal for an accomplishment? Or do we use them as incentives for participation ("gamification")?
- Do we want to ensure quality of badges or will that be Creative Commons and Open Knowledge Foundation
- How present do we want badges to be? A lot of tension is around using badges as rewards or motivation. One solution could be that all badges are stealth badges that magically appear.
- Putting badges totally in the background removes tension but doesn't solve the problem?
- What are we trying to get out of the badge?
- Allow assessment is one of the goals of having badges that does not work so well with stealth badges
- Will badges become (solely) an integral part of p2pu.org? Will they be used outside of P2PU or challenges?
- This means the badges we issue
- They should at least be OBI compliant (so they will be used outside posted in the user blogs and other sites is one of the functionalities the OBI will probide to the users once the badge is issued to the OBI)
- Modular Badges at P2PU
- Ideas / Examples
- Challenges use badges, awarded based on work completion
- Schools use badges, Organization has a profile with a list of the badges that they've created and placed on offer
- Badge Builder (John to explain some ideas)
- use case:
- organization creates badge and associates it with an existing school
- individual creates a badge and associates it with a course they designed
- separate from the "how does someone get the badge" question
- badge is independent of the assessment leading to the badge
- http://thenounproject.com/
- badgepost
- mozilla openbadger - todo: investigate if that's what mozilla is building
- Q: is it mostly about the image?
- I used it to search for Writing for the Web badges--it was pretty good. And folks who want to make their own image can submit to the Noun Project themselves, too.
- Don't have to use noun project, just an example of lots of free glyphs under CC
- In the short term we need a basic GUI to create badges with current assessment logic
Other goals
- Opportunities for P2PU to innovate (John)
- Respond to needs / requests from the community (Philipp)
- Explore the tension around badges (Vanessa)
Next steps
Badges for Learning
- Goal -> how do we want to use badges?
- Recommendations for measurement--P said the system is very "game-able" & that c/b improved
- Skill badges, stealth badges, community badges
- Assessment leading to badges
- Recommendations for the core skills we are going to assess--ie technical skills, community values, habits
Badge Issuer (DML)
- Goal -> other people being able to create learning experiences that lead to badges
- Do guidelines exist for badge issuers right now? From a learning point of view?
- No, any org that technically-issues badges is free to decide who to give the badges to
- Components (to be designed and builded -- based on our current implementation of some of this features)
- badge builder -- someone creates the badge (name, desc, image, ...)
- define rubric
- experience of a course that leads to the badge being issued
- last step is the obi integration
- Use case:
- School of Data needs badges connected to courses
- We could put together a series of guidelines (once we establish what our approach to assessment is
- does Badges for Learning and Badge Issuer happen at the same time?
Questions:
- We don't know yet what exactly we want to build, how do we build the badge issuer while we are still learning how badges should work?
- What's our hypothesis, let's test that with users while building the least amount possible. Let's not throw all of our effort into building a specific thing that won't change (because it probably will based on our testing).
- I think there are several questions--do badges work in terms of "knowledge retention"? do they work in terms of representing connecting to others? do they improve learner's lives in other ways?
- What happens with badges issued while we are building and experimenting?
- put safegaurds in place (like final review)
- issue beta badges at first
- So we are still in pilot phase (not pilot - but we are still learning, need to design/build something that can evolve)
- We have a set of badges that were issued already
- Risk - too much focus on school of data, could be distraction from general needs
School of Data:
- Buy into project based learning model (=challenges except they need it to be more facilitated and with singup?)
- In addition, they need facilitated cohorts in addition to challenges -- not part of the badges project
- Timing for School of Data launch?
- Kick off workshop end of May / project planning - content sprints
- @John - would be good to get a timeframe for cohorts inclusion before 23 May so I can include in the project planning on their end
- So peer activities will be a core part of their course model--->needs an assessment piece - yes to both
- Yes, we do need test users to validate our hipotesis (after we figure out which they are)
Foundations
- P2PU issues digital badges as a way to certify accomplishments
- Accomplishments are connected to some experience within the P2PU context / community
- P2PU's learning model is social (peer - to - peer) and assessments that identify these accomplishments need to fit with the P2PU model
Next concrete steps:
- Go through existing research / survey data
- Make recommendations for measurements, skills to accredit
- Identify badges / assessments specific to School of Data and wider P2PU community
- We need to come up with a few hypothesis - What do we think needs to change, how should it change, why do we think that... then test it
- What are we trying to change about what we have?
- Only P2PU can create badges
- Badge system is too easy to game
- UX of badge review is horrid
- Some of these seem like questions / not hypothesis:
- Should every badge have an associated authority?
- No, some badges are issued by P2PU
- I agree John--what does the P2PU part of the authority mean, though? We need to give guidelines to UGC users too.
- Important issue once we let individuals create P2PU issued badges
- UI for people with permissions to create badges using existing P2PU badge logic?
- maybe later implement peer review for badges?
- Add badge type that can only be gained by final review by mandated people
Similar to how research experiments are done
Question: What does OKFN want out of badges
- They want to issue certification
- What does "issue" mean here, is it OKFN & employees, trusted community members, or more? Why?
- Should badges have value?
- Badges should have value (of course)
- Who can create badges?
- right now -> only P2PU (Dirk/Zuzel)
- first step -> schools
- second step -> individuals -- when? how is this going to influence badges value? (good question - for later?)
- maybe badges can be peer reviewed? make badges get badges -- per review the badge metadata if the name, desc, rubrics, ..... are ok
- not just peer review to award a badge, but do a community review of new badges
- What are we trying to change about what we have?
- Only P2PU can create badges -> others need to be able to do that
- Badge system is too easy to game -> need to understand how and if an issue, and how to avoid
- Maybe add badge type that can only be gained by final review by mandated people (yes, makes sense for Schools)
- UX of badge review is horrid -> improve experience+1
- We don't understand the link between learning / motivation / badges yet
Who is the person ultimately responsible for making sure this gets done? [P2PU is responsible, we need to split ownership among the people on this call]
- Split ownership is hard, someone needs to drive.
- Vanessa - Badges for learning
- John - Build badge issuer (Vanessa is "client")
Dev tasks:
- Clean up UX?
- Create creation UX?
- Who takes responsibility for what?
- High-level goals / milestones
- (bonus: high level project plan)
Discussion:
- What are others building?
- http://badgepost.com/
- basic django issuer funcationality built by les orchard
- mozilla is working on open badger
- Ability to issue badges for others, e.g. School of Data