Open digital badges in Open edX

Slides for the presentation at the Open edX Conference, Cambridge, MA 2014.

 

This talk presented the first public update of our collaboration to implement open digital badges in Dr. Barba's new MOOC, "Practical Numerical Methods with Python."

It's a collaboration between Indiana University's Center for Research on Learning and Technology (led by Prof. Daniel T. Hickey);  Prof. Lorena Barba and her team at George Washington University, with her partners at IBL Studios Education, and open digital badge provider Achievery. 

Prof. Daniel T. Hickey and his team are participating in this effort with the support of the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Initiative.

Open digital badges are evidence-backed micro-credentials that promise to capture and reflect the varied participation trends typical of MOOC participants. The first pilot of open badges on Open edX will be run on the Numerical Python MOOC developed by Prof. Barba in collaboration with two international universities.

This presentation briefly introduces the technical specifications that define the metadata that must be included in a badge to be compliant with the open standards and the associated open licenses. This includes how it was earned, where it was earned, who earned it, if and when it expires, etc.

The integration of open digital badges within Open edX in this pilot is enabled by the Achievery API and an XBlock and Python client developed by IBL Studios with conceptual design by L. Barba and M. Amigot. The badges will be issued in the first MOOC upon successful completion of graded sub-sections in the Open edX platform.