#badgekit

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Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials

Session Session 8: Introducing Mozilla BadgeKit

#openbadgesMOOC

Session Recording: http://bit.ly/OBMOOC8

This week on the #openbadgesMOOC, New Currency for Professional Credentials, Sunny Lee walked through Mozilla BadgeKit, the new set of open, foundational tools to support the entire badging process currently available in private beta for select partners developing badges for their communities. You can view Sunny's slides here.

As many of our community members have already read, seen or listened to many different presentations introducing BadgeKit, we will take this opportunity to address some more frequently asked questions that we didn't get to in our BadgeKit announcement.

What is BadgeKit?

BadgeKit is a set of open, foundational tools to make the badging process easy. It includes tools to support the entire process, including badge design, creation, assessment and issuing, remixable badge templates, milestone badges to support leveling up, and much more. The tools are open source and have common interfaces to make  it easy to build additional tools or customizations on top of the  standard core, or to plug in other tools or systems.

BadgeKit  builds on existing technologies that have evolved out of several years of work and user testing, including Chicago Summer of Learning. In fact, specific tools within BadgeKit are currently being used for key partners within the badges ecosystem (i.e. Connected Educators.)

Mozilla BadgeKit is now available in private beta for select partner  organizations that  meet specific technical requirements. And anyone can  download the code  from GitHub and implement it on their own servers. 

BadgeKit:

Improves the badging experience for issuers, learners and consumers, by making badging easy to do.

Closes the current gaps in the ecosystem by providing free, open badging tools to support the needs of issuers. 

Provides foundational tools needed to help grow and develop the open badges ecosystem.

Builds our values of openness, interoperability, agency, choice, and connectedness into the way we recognize learning and skills, and helps shape emerging badge systems.

BadgeKit is open source, so improvements made by community members benefit everyone, from bug fixes to new features and more. It is also easily extendable, working seamlessly with other open tools and systems as they emerge.

Why BadgeKit?

While open badges technology has been gaining momentum - with more than 2,000 organizations issuing badges that align with the Open Badges system - there are still ways we can make it easier for organizations to join the ecosystem.

Today, there are too many gaps in the badging experience and many of the existing options are too closed, too expensive or too big. In fact, given the current options for organizations interested in issuing badges, it can be harder to make an open badge than a closed badge!

What tools does BadgeKit include?

BadgeKit  provides modular and open options (standards) for the community of badge makers to use and build upon within their existing sites or systems. Currently, BadgeKit supports key points in the badging experience, including:

Design: A tool for defining all of the metadata, including criteria pages, and finalizing visual design for each badge.

Templates: Visual and metadata designs that can be remixed by anyone creating a badge.

Milestones: The ability to have a group of badges level up to a larger, more significant badge.

Assess: A tool for mentor or peer assessment that includes issuer defining rubrics and criteria for a  badge, the ability for learners to apply for a  badge by adding information and evidence, as well as access for  assessors to manage applications and enable review and scoring.

Issue: A tool for awarding badges to learners and hosting assertions to enable badges to be pushed to Backpacks.

Collect: A “Backpack” for collecting badges across various experiences or organizations. 

Throughout 2014, we will be adding additional tools to BadgeKit, including: 

Discover: A directory of available badges with features for searching, filtering, wish listing and endorsing badges.

Share: A tool to enable easy sharing of badge on various sites across the web (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.).

Collect: Backpacks will become “federated", meaning that different instances still plug into the broader ecosystem and can share data across.

How can I use BadgeKit?

Mozilla BadgeKit is now available in private beta for select partner  organizations that meet specific technical requirements. And anyone can  download the code from GitHub and implement it on their own servers. 

SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE: At BadgeKit.org, you'll be able to access BadgeKit: a hosted version of the tools to build out badges, remix badge templates, create badge levels, issue badges, etc. APIs will make it easy to then pull the badges and end user  interfaces into your own website. All of the backend pieces are hosted, supported and updated by Mozilla, and you'll have complete control over the experience of your end users through your own sites.

DOWNLOAD: Easily download the code from https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges-badgekit  and install the tools on your own server. 

What's the difference between downloading the code from Github and using the private beta version of BadgeKit?

In downloading the BadgeKit code, you will be in charge of the backend and hosting of BadgeKit, and will be able to customize and extend the tools as much as needed.

For the private beta version of BadgeKit, all the backend pieces are hosted, supported and updated by  Mozilla, while you still have complete control over the experience of your end users on your own sites through our APIs.

Is BadgeKit available now?

Yes - Mozilla BadgeKit is available in private beta for select partner organizations that meet specific technical requirements. Visit www.badgekit.org to learn more and apply for private beta access.

And BadgeKit code is currently available on Github, with additional features set to be added in the coming months. To download the tools, visit Github: https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges-badgekit.

How can I sign up for BadgeKit?

Mozilla BadgeKit is available in private beta for select partner organizations that meet specific technical requirements. 

To apply for private beta access, visit www.badgekit.org. Given your organization meets the specific hosted version requirements, you will receive a follow-up email with full details on how to get started. 

What are the technical requirements for the hosted version of BadgeKit?

The technical requirements necessary for private beta access to the hosted version of BadgeKit are:

You have a front end website or have resources to develop one

You have technical resources on staff to integrate the BadgeKit APIs into your experience

You intend to build or roll out a badge system for your community and organization in 2014

How are you selecting partners for the private beta?

Right  now we're making that decision based on each organization's technical resources and capacity. But by the end of 2014, the hosted version will be available to any organization looking to implement a badging system! 

Who is BadgeKit for? 

BadgeKit is currently in private beta and can be used by any issuing organization that meets specific technical requirements. It is aimed at organizations that  are building full badge systems and want to leverage their own sites and  systems on the front end, as well as have access to technology  resources. Tool providers might also be interested in leveraging BadgeKit to extend their own tools, or build additional customizations on top of BadgeKit.

I am a middle school teacher looking to issue badges. Can I use BadgeKit?

Not yet. Today, BadgeKit is currently in private beta and meant for organizations that have access to technology resources and are looking to implement a full badge system. We are exploring ways to create a lighter weight version of BadgeKit that could be used by individuals, and hope to have it ready later this year. In the meantime check out the additional community driven issuing platforms at http://bit.ly/platform-chart to help you get started. 

I want to issue a badge to a large group of people at one time. Is that possible?

Not yet - but we're working on it! You can track progress in Github here: https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges-badgekit/issues/205.

I need help. Is there someone that can help me?

We have a variety of ways we can help. You can simply select the option that best meets your needs:

Post general questions in our Community Google Group and post specific technical questions in our Developer Google Group

Reach members of the Open Badges team directly on Mozilla IRC in the #badges room

Watch the BadgeKit video tutorial on YouTube

Access the BadgeKit written tutorial on Github

Email questions directly to [email protected] and a member of the team will follow-up directly

You can download a printable version of this FAQ to share with your communities, and Sunny's slides from the live session are available here.

#badgekit 

Yesterday we announced the release of BadgeKit, a set of open, foundational tools to support the entire badging process. We're super excited to start helping people get badge systems up and running using one or more of these tools.

As part of our efforts in rolling out the private beta launch, we will be hosting a series of general BadgeKit training sessions over the next two weeks.

These sessions will look at how all the tools in BadgeKit will work, and we will be hosting more in-depth training sessions on the individual tools in the following weeks.

There will be five sessions held over the next two weeks:

Monday March 10, 9-10am ET

Wednesday March 12, 4-5pm ET

Thursday March 13, 8-9pm ET

Tuesday March 18, 1-2pm ET

Wednesday March 19, 4-5pm ET

Please register for the date and time that works best for you by clicking this link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/rt/8459989167167596034

We’ve talked a ton about BadgeKit over the past few months from its initial announcement back in October at Mozfest to BadgeKit MVP defining, tech defining, user experience design, to more recently BadgeKit for Cities.  Many of these posts pointed to BadgeKit being made available at the Digital Media & Learning conference, this year taking place in Boston from March 6 through 8.  And we’re finally here! We will be making BadgeKit available to organizations interested in issuing open badges. As previously mentioned, this initial release of BadgeKit targets organizations, like cities, who want to stand up larger-scale badge systems. This was a natural evolution of the work we did for Chicago Summer of Learning last year and the tools we developed to support that initiative such as Badge Studio (badge design tool), Open Badger (badge defining and issuing tool) and Aestimia (badge application and assessment tool).  So what will this initial release of BadgeKit entail for issuing organizations?

* Enable access control The issuing organization can create an uber admin login and from there grant some level of access control like who gets to issue a badge and who gets to assess/review a badge. We are thinking about adding more granularity down the road with ongoing user feedback and issuer requests.  * Design a badge

The issuing organization can get started on designing and defining their badges. BadgeKit will support the full badge life cycle states from draft form, published to archived. The badge design and defining experience will be scaffolded through the introduction of templates. An example of templatizing badges can be found in the badges designed and issued as part of Chicago Summer of Learning. These badges all shared a hexagonal shape and a Chicago city banner that hung across it. 

This is an example of templates used to create consistent badge design but they can also be used for content creation. Some badges that are part of the same program may share similar information, like issuing organization name, program name, including elements of criteria. Rather than the issuing organization having to rewrite this information with each new badge, templates can help build on templatized content. We think templates can greatly help streamline the badge creation process for organizations.  * Create badges that level up Not only that, issuing organizations can build in leveling up features into their badge system. We are calling these milestone badges. An issuer can define the set of badges that together unlock a larger badge, which we are calling a milestone badge.  * Issue a badge via email The issuing organization will be able to issue a badge using the earner’s email. However, as perviously mentioned, BadgeKit is intended to be a backend admin support for issuing orgs who have existing sites where their communities reside. When a badge is issued to an earner via email on BadgeKit, this information is relayed to the issuing org’s application for the issuing org to determine how the badge will actually be delivered, whether via email, SMS or message in a bottle. Badge issuing via email is supported through the BadgeKit API with the issuer, customizing specific experiences according to their community needs and desires.  * Display a badge on Issuer site via BadgeKit API The issuing organization will be able to pull all the badges they have designed and created on BadgeKit onto their own website through an API and customize the badge interaction experience for their community of badge earners.  * Support earners to apply for a badge on issuer site via BadgeKit API When an earner is on the issuer site and comes across a badge that she would like to earn and can apply for online, she can do so. The earner, or prospective earner in this case, can click through and see the badge criteria and apply for the badge by submitting relevant information and evidence. This experience is supported by the BadgeKit API.  * Assess a badge  Once the prospective earner has submitted all relevant information on the issuer site, that badge application becomes accessible on the badgekit.org site to badge assessors/reviewers who have been granted the appropriate access controls from the issuing organization. Assessors/reviewers can then see the queue of badge applications and start evaluating them based on pre-defined criteria and/or rubrics. They can provide feedback and determine whether to issue or deny the earner of the badge. As mentioned in bullet 4, the earner experience of the actual delivery of the badge is defined by the issuer.  * Support earners to send their earned badges to federated backpacks n.b. Federated backpack feature will come later this month Because BadgeKit is integrated with the open badges standard and APIs, the earner has the opportunity to send their earned badges to federated backpacks where they can decide how they want to further share it out to various social media channels.  * In addition to all this, it’s worth noting the brand definition work that our designers took on. We have a nice streamlined BadgeKit logo that is cohesive with the parent brand of Open Badges as well as Mozilla. This work was led by our designer Adil Kim with the guidance of our Creative Lead, Jess Klein who has written about this in greater detail in her blogpost: http://jessicaklein.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-designing-badgekit.html

Today we are really excited to officially announce the release of BadgeKit, a new set of open, foundational tools to support the entire badging process for organizations developing badges for their communities.

While open badges has been gaining momentum - with more than 2,000 organizations issuing badges that align with the Open Badges standard - there are still ways we can make it easier for organizations to join the ecosystem, with free, flexible, open badging tools that support the needs of issuers, learners and consumers. There are too many gaps in the badging experience and many of the existing options are too closed, too expensive or too big. In fact, given the current options for organizations interested in issuing badges, it can be harder to make an open badge than a closed badge!

That's why Mozilla is happy to launch BadgeKit. BadgeKit will:

Support key stages in the badging experience including creating, designing, assessing and issuing;

Include remixable templates and milestone badges allowing for easy customization;

Provide modular and open options (standards) for the community of badge makers to use and build upon within their existing sites or systems;

Build our values of openness, interoperability, agency, choice, and connectedness into the core and help shape emerging badge systems.

BadgeKit builds on existing technologies that have evolved out of several years of work and user testing, including the Chicago Summer of Learning. In fact, specific tools within BadgeKit are currently being used by key partners within the badges ecosystem. We anticipate opening up Mozilla BadgeKit access throughout 2014. 

We softly released BadgeKit at last year’s MozFest, and we've shared our progress along the way through blog posts and Github milestones. We are thrilled to be reaching this milestone today in the release of BadgeKit.

Mozilla BadgeKit will be available in two forms:

A hosted version of Mozilla BadgeKit is available in private beta for select partner organizations that meet specific technical requirements. 

Anyone can download Mozilla BadgeKit code from GitHub and implement it on their own servers. 

What tools are included in BadgeKit?

BadgeKit provides lightweight, modular and open options for the community of badge makers to use and build upon within their existing sites or systems, including:

Design:A tool for defining all of the metadata, including criteria pages, and finalizing visual design for each badge.

Templates: Visual and metadata designs that can be remixed by anyone creating a badge.

Milestones: The ability to have a group of badges level up to a larger, more significant badge.

Assess: A tool for mentor or peer assessment that includes issuer defining rubrics and criteria for a badge, the ability for learners to apply for a badge by adding information and evidence, as well as access for assessors to manage applications and enable review and scoring.

Issue: A tool for awarding badges to learners and hosting assertions to enable badges to be pushed to Backpacks.

Collect: A “Backpack” for collecting badges across various experiences or organizations.

In the coming year, we will be developing additional tools for BadgeKit, as well as minimizing the technology requirements needed for access. Tools coming soon include: 

Discover: A directory of available badges with features for searching, filtering, wish listing and endorsing badges.

Share: A tool to enable easy sharing of badge on various sites across the web (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.).

Collect: Backpacks will become “federated”, meaning that different instances still plug into the broader ecosystem and can share data across.

The tools are open source and have common interfaces to make it easy to build additional tools or customizations on top of the standard core, or to plug in other tools or systems.

Who is BadgeKit for?

BadgeKit is currently in private beta and can be used by any issuing organization that meets specific technical requirements. It is aimed at organizations that are building full badge systems and want to leverage their own sites and systems on the front end, as well as have access to technology resources. Tool providers might also be interested in leveraging BadgeKit to extend their own tools, or build additional customizations on top of BadgeKit.

Initial technical requirements:

You have a front-end website or the resources to develop one

You have technical resources on staff to integrate the BadgeKit APIs into your experience

You intend to build or roll out a badge system for your community and organization in 2014

We are exploring ways to create a lighter weight version of BadgeKit that could be used by for individuals and small organizations in 2014, but in the meantime, you can check out the additional community driven issuing platforms at http://bit.ly/platform-chart to help you get started.

How do you get started?

We have a hosted version of Mozilla BadgeKit available in private beta for select partner organizations that meet specific technical requirements. And anyone can download the code from GitHub and implement it on their own servers. 

BadgeKit can be accessed in two ways:

Software as a service: At BadgeKit.org, you'll be able to access a hosted version of the tools to build out badges, remix badge templates, create badge levels, issue badges, etc. APIs will make it easy to then pull the badges and end user interfaces into your own website. All of the backend pieces are hosted, supported and updated by Mozilla, and you'll have complete control over the experience of your end users through your own sites.

Download: Easily download the code from https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges-badgekit and install the tools on your own server. 

What’s the difference between these two options? Well, if you choose to download the code, you will be in charge of the backend and hosting of BadgeKit, and will be able to customize and extend the tools as much as you need. For the fully hosted version of BadgeKit, all the backend pieces are hosted, supported and updated by Mozilla while you still have complete control over the experience of your end users on your own sites through our APIs.

Originally posted on the Mozilla blog

====================================================

Today, we’re proud to announce a number of major educational and workforce development organizations including Pearson, edX, Educational Testing Service (ETS), Workforce.io and more have committed to adopting the Open Badges standard.

This news was announced today at the Open Badges Summit to Reconnect Learning in Redwood City, CA, where more than 250 people have gathered to discuss how to recognize achievements, competencies, and skills wherever and however they are learned.

There are now more than 2000 organizations issuing badges that align with the Open Badges standard. Mozilla is supporting this growth through the release of BadgeKit, an out-of-the-box offering for organizations looking to issue and recognize badges. Additionally, we’re very excited about the creation of the Badge Alliance, a new network of organizations that are committed to developing and growing a badge ecosystem with shared values including openness, giving learners agency, and innovation; to be headed by Mozilla’s Open Badges pioneer, Erin Knight.

Mozilla first began working on the Open Badges project with the MacArthur Foundation and the Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory (HASTAC) in 2011 as an attempt to create a universal way of recognizing the learning that happens everywhere — both inside and outside of the classroom. Though others had previously explored this idea, it was the “open” part that made Open Badges so unique; by keeping the tech and infrastructure open source, we ensured that we weren’t just creating more silos, but rather building the foundation of an ecosystem to foster and recognize the holistic way we now learn.

We’re excited that these new education and workforce organizations will be joining the ecosystem, and anticipate the arrival of additional major partners in the months to come. Read the details below, and follow along what’s happening at the Open Badges Summit on Twitter with #SRL14.

Introducing new partners who committed to align with the Open Badges standard and integrate badges into their work:

Pearson: Pearson has launched Acclaim, an enterprise-class Open Badge platform built to support the world’s most prestigious credentialing organizations and post-secondary academic institutions.

edX: edX pledges to work with its open-source community, Open edX, and Mozilla to implement a badges system for the approximately 2 million edX students to showcase their completion of edX classes.

Educational Testing Service: ETS pledges to continue to provide effective and efficient tools to measure student learning outcomes and student success through assessments such as the ETS® Proficiency Profile and iSkillsTM assessment, using Open Badges to capture and showcase student learning outcomes assessments so that test takers have yet one more way to provide evidence of their skills to academia and beyond.

Workforce.io: Workforce.io pledges to create an online platform that utilizes job skill badges & video content as a new common language for the entry level & middle skill jobs to connect the employer, job seeker and trainer with this new language and re-align today’s workforce.

Council for Aid to Education and ProExam: Professional Examination Service pledges to partner with the Council for Aid to Education to issue Open Badges for the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA+) and College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA+).

Afterschool Alliance: The Afterschool Alliance pledges to work with Mozilla and five Statewide Afterschool Networks to offer open badges to youth and adult workforce in afterschool and summer programs.

Get Involved:

Learn more about Open Badges

Read Mark Surman’s blog post from the Summit.

Join the Open Badges Community

Learn more about BadgeKit

As you all know, I can’t stop talking about BadgeKit, the product we’re working on for a beta release in early March. As it turns out, folks are starting to line up to get in on the BadgeKit action and many of them are cities who would like to bring the Summer of Learning experience, like the one Mozilla collaborated on with the city of Chicago in 2013, to their respective neighborhoods.  So with several different cities expressing interest for a summer 2014 rollout, we started to think, what would Cities of Learning 2014 look like built on top of BadgeKit? Chicago was definitely unique as they were the guinea pig for the tools we’re now evolving and refactoring to form the base of BadgeKit. But as more and more cities line up, we think there’s an opportunity for a shared model among cities in which cities leverage one another’s content through a common technical infrastructure powered by BadgeKit.  Rather than Milwaukee, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Portland, having their own Summer of Learning sites that are silo-ed and independent, what if we provided cities with the option to leverage one another’s learning content and badging experiences? That would essentially multiply the learning pathways and engagement opportunities for their community of learners. How exciting would that be; for a learner in Milwaukee to check out all the cool things going on in the city of Portland, or LA or Chicago? Not only that, the shared technical infrastructure could provide multiple benefits for cities such as the following:

Through sharing a common framework, cities can reduce complexity and create turnkey badging solutions

Cities are provided with an opportunity to connect with multiple organizations and networks, not to mention other cities

A shared framework can reduce costs

Cities can share resources, diversify content and create more badging experiences for their learners

Cities can play a pivotal role in investing in building the foundation for a badging system that can be expanded to more cities and organizations

This past week, we marked the completion of Milestone 2, affectionately coined, “Preparing for Flight" on our BadgeKit product development roadmap. The milestone preceding “Preparing for Flight” was, “Ducks in a row”.  The goals we wanted to reach in Ducks in a Row are very much deducible by its name. We wanted to ensure we had everything teed up for us to move efficiently and effectively throughout the development of BadgeKit. We essentially wanted to get all our ducks in a row prior to the holidays so we could hit the ground running once we came back in the new year and pick up where we left off. As a refresher, our goals for Ducks in a Row included the following:

Product definition finalized

Software architecture conceptualized and defined

Wireframes for MVP designed

Plan for implementation drafted

** check out the amazing badges Jess designed for the team, each time we reach a milestone. This one is for Ducks in a Row. 

Our work was happening in parallel between the design team, led by Jess Klein and our development team, lead by Chris McAvoy, of course with a lot of cross pollination. While the design team sketched out the user experience, the development team deep-dived into the software backbone originating from the Chicago Summer of Learning experience, namely Open Badger, Aestemia, BadgeStudio and the CSOL site.  Coming back from break, we found ourselves refreshed, recharged and ready to go. And we dived into what we set out to accomplish in the next milestone, “Preparing for Flight”, for which a big driver was user testing.  In previous product development roadmaps, we’ve meant to incorporate user testing early and frequently but a lot of times when corners needed to be cut and project timelines re-negotiated, user testing would often be the first thing to get compromised. But with a dedicated user researcher on the team, shout out to Emily Goligoski, we have a strong, prevailing voice, advocating for the need to layer in user testing early on in the product development cycle, not to mention, our Creative Lead, Jess Klein, strongly supporting this vision.  As such, right out of the gate, the goal of milestone 2 was to get to a prototype that was testable. The following comprised the overarching goals of the Preparing for Flight milestone:

Working app: mockups / stubbed functionality for anything that isn’t ready

User testing sessions identified

User tests planned

Milestone badges, aka meta badges, aka level-up badges, experience within BadgeKit designed

Visual language study initiated

Federated city backpack requirements explored

Branding work initiated

We reached this milestone this week as initially planned. What that means is that today, we have something that looks a lot like the UX sketches designed by Matthew Willse, our lead UX designer, on a staging site that provides a solid, albeit work in progress, BadgeKit experience. There are of course a lot of things missing here. There is essentially no UI direction or touch, many pages are “stubbed out” meaning there may be links to pages but those pages are not fully functioning yet and the front end is not entirely wired up with the backend powering many of the intended experiences. But there is still enough there to get out to users who can weigh in on the initial proof of concept and provide us with a gut check on our direction. 

We also got a badge for completing this milestone, courtesy of Jess Klein. :)