Hi, I'm very pleased to announce that Totara Learning Solutions (the distributors of the corporate distro of Moodle called TotaraLMS) will be developing an Open Badges solution for Moodle and Mahara. The "Moodle as Issuer, Mahara as Displayer" project will integrate Mozilla's "Open Badges" software to issue, manage and display digital badges in Moodle and 3rd party sites such as social media and also eportfolio systems - we'll develop a solutions for Mahara. We will use Moodle.or to collaborate and get feedback on the specs and of course all the new software will be released as open source to Moodle (ideally integrated into core) . All users of Moodle, in all the different contexts, stand to benefit from this initiative.
As some folk know, I've been involved in a number of significant Moodle based projects over the years including MyMoodle and Moodle Networks (Mnet) and I lead the Mahara project, and also Totara Learning Solutions so it's great to be doing this project. We're strong believers in the transformative nature of open source infrastructure and open badges has some amazing potential.
Although, the architecture has yet to be finalised, the high level thinking goes as follows at this stage. Please bear in mind that we will work closely with Moodle HQ and Catalyst also, as we have historically done. On this occasion we will also be working with Mozilla.
- Issuing badges will leverage Moodle’s Activity and Course completion functionality. We are the maintainers of Course completion.
- It is likely we will develop a significantly updated and modified version of the Certificate module, that will dispense Open Badge PNGs instead of PDF files.
- Badges will be stored in Moodle and can also be downloadable by users once they have earned them.
- A web service (open to all, no authentication needed) will be provided to help displayers verify the authenticity of badges issued by a specific Moodle site.
- On the display side, we will create a new block for Moodle that users will be able to place on their profile page. It will be a similar version to the Mahara block and will use the same underlying library for interacting with the Open Badges API.
- We will use the Moodle Portfolio API to push badges automatically to Mahara.
About Open Badges
Learning today happens everywhere but it's often difficult to get recognition for skills and achievements gained outside of formal education and training contexts. Mozilla's Open Badges project is working to solve that problem, making it easy for any organization or learning community to issue, earn and display badges across the web. The result: recognizing 21st century skills, unlocking career and educational opportunities, and helping learners everywhere level up in their life and work.
The Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition brought together Web developers, designers and technologists with educators, online learning innovators and collaborators that range from NASA, the U.S. Department of Education and the Girl Scouts of America to Intel, Disney-Pixar and Motorola.
The goal: explore how digital badges can provide learners of all ages new ways to gain 21st century skills, harness the full educational power of the Internet, and unlock career and learning opportunities in the real world.
For more information visit: www.openbadges.org
cheers
Richard
Richard, this is exciting & timely! I'll be following this initiative with interest.
Great stuff! Looking forward to seeing Open Badges implementations in Moodle.
This is one of the most exciting things to happen in Moodle-sphere!
What is the possibility of pushing the badges out to the users' My Moodle page instead of to Mahara?
Keep us posted with developments
Hi Karl,
Good point!
I think would make more sense not to make an implementation of Mozilla Open Badges dependent on having two software platforms installed. Many Moodle systems are not integrated with Mahara and some Mahara systems may use another LMS.
Personally, I think institutionally hosted portfolios aren't the best approach as learners should have ownership and control over their own materials and CV/resume. Some learners use blogging software or other popular CMS' to organise their online portfolios so that they can keep it with them no matter where or what they study, either in accredited institutions or informally. This is particularly true of programmers, writers, musicians, actors/performers and artists.
Hi Karl & Matt
"I think would make more sense not to make an implementation of Mozilla Open Badges dependent on having two software platforms installed."
Don't worry, that's never been the case. It won't be platform dependent - and a Moodle will be able to display the badges internally. Also on the display side, we will create a new block for Moodle that users will be able to place on their profile page - at least that's the thinking at the moment. We'll write up the spec for comment anyway. The Moodle block will be a similar version to the Mahara block and will use the same underlying library for interacting with the Open Badges API. This code could be used in any app e.g. Drupal.
In summary, there will not be any requirement to use Mahara. We just want to demonstrate the web services approach we're taking and Mahara is a good app to illustrate that.
kind regards
Richard
Hi Richard,
That's great to hear. Thanks for clarifying those points.
Hi Richard
Many thanks for the reply.
I really do love this idea and I'm truly excited about the potential of Open Badges delivered via a Moodle platform (ticks all boxes in my opinion!!)
If you need a beta tester or a live Moodle to act as a guinea pig give me a shout!
I wish you all the best with this project!
Thanks
Karl
A great initiative! What would this triple M alliance be called? I want to suggest Mahoodlezilla for this!
An excellent project that matches the requirements of the #digitalstudies movement on twitter. Please look at http://teachesict.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/assessing-digitalstudies-grades-or-badges/ to see if we are the audience you are aiming at?
This is a really exciting combination of tools. I was hoping as soon as I saw Open Badges that it would go hand in hand with moodle. Cheers for taking this on!
Richard,
Best of luck to you. Excellent idea and why Moodle is at the forefront of learning.
Jeff Kissinger
Hi Richard, what is the timescale for making the Open Badges block and activity available?
Thanks
Guy
Hi Guy, the project was to have commenced by now but the process for releasing project funds has been delayed at their end. We're very keen to get going so I'm hoping for good news on this shortly.
cheers
Richard
Hi again,
Good news. We are now officially underway with the Open Badges. Preliminarly project planning is underway and we'll put up a wiki on Moodle.org sometime during July. I'm putting the team together who will work on the project.
Would you please let us know when the Wiki will be up? I am extremely interested in using badges as rewards for my online Moodle course?
Deb Streacker
Richard,
Same here. I'd be very interested in being kept up to date on this project. I don't have any resources for conntributing to coding but I have a strong idea of what I'd like Moodle to be able to do in terms of Open Badges so if you think that you need to add a user perspective to the team I'd be glad to be involved.
I have a course I'm building in Moodle this year in which I'd like to award badges. I've been chatting to the people in badge.us (which I may use to issue badges if I don't have an option within Moodle) and they tell me that they will be building an API - should we be thinking of linking Moodle to an open-source project such as badge.us?
Is anyone is planning to go to ALT-C conference in the UK (http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2012/)? I have had a presentation accepted on Open Badges. It is very much from the user's perspective and as I can't say that I am an expert on Open Badges, I hope to make it a fast presentation and concentrate on generating a discussion, and I hope I can get a few interested people to come along and contribute.
Brian Mulligan
Centre for Online Learning
Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland
I'm pleased to report that we've created a draft spec on the wiki now:
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/openbadges
and we've created a tracker issue:
http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-35073
At this stage we are really keen for comments on the proposed spec, both in terms of functionality and technical implementation.
We'll flesh out the use cases with more detail once we're happy we're on the right track then start working on some of the implementation details.
Simon
Hi there and thanks for this. Where would you like your feedback? On the talk page of the wiki? In this forum thread? ( edit: Actually, I've just been reading through your wiki and I think you are wanting it here -so here's looking forward to some feedback)
Yes, here to start with - if discussions get very in depth and the thread gets unwieldy we can create new topic threads as needed.
Simon
A few random thoughts:
If badges & certificates was to be one module, then it would need to be able to deliver both (keeping PDF for certificates and png for badges).
And if you were to extend certificate would the work be possible to have the certificates also auto-copied to mahara
I imagine that people would probably want to be able to have the badges for course completion, not just activity, so that would mean extending certificate logic / settings (unless it has got course completion dependency recently that I did not see)
Is the auto-copying to Mahara going be generic auto-copying to a named portfolio so it could be google too? or just mahara?
If it is just Mahara will it be a plugin to a generic auto-copy-badge framework or just mahara only?
Need coffee, so enough for now. More later.
First off there are a couple of options in relation to the mahara integration:
- Handle sharing between moodle + mahara via the open badges infrastructure ("badge backpack")
- Handle sharing between moodle + mahara via the portfolio API
If we choose the first option only then mahara would just be a displayer of all badges - badges received via moodle would be treated the same as any badges received from an external system. This is the easiest to implement but it does mean that users must set up a Mozilla Persona account or equivalent and actively manage their badge backpack.
As for option 2, we haven't fully investigated the portfolio API so I can't really answer your question on if other portfolios would also be supported, but we will be look into it. It depends on if each portfolio type needs its own code to receive the badges, or if we can push the data in a generic way and let each portfolio decide how to handle it.
Simon
I imagine that people would probably want to be able to have the badges for course completion, not just activity
This brings up a good point - is an activity module the correct "level" to implement this feature? It might make sense for it to sit outside of courses so that users can receive badges for completing courses, or even for other non-course related activities (filling out user profile, tagging items, etc.).
On the other hand being able to delegate badge creation and assignment to course creators is clearly really important and having it as an activity makes that really easy.
Simon
Hi Richard,
Is there any tentative date for the beta release of this plugin?
Sohail
Hi Sohail,
Not yet, we are still working on specifications and the scope - once we've decided exactly what we're going to build we'll have a better idea of how long it might take.
Simon
Hi,
Any other news on this development?
Our educational institution would be extremely excited about issuing badges through our Moodle platform.
Cheers
Andy
Hi Andy,
Good to know!
Right now Yuliya is working full time on developing a more detailed specifications and deciding priorities for the first release. Once that's done we'll put it online for review/comment/feedback.
We have a technical call with the open badges next week to help us figure out some of the implementation details.
Once the spec is finalised we should be able to give an estimate for when we might get a first release out.
Simon
Hi Yuliya, this is really exciting and excellent!
Just one question/thought about "evidence". When someone clicks on a badge (inside or outside the organisation, i.e. also when in the backpack) they see a link to an evidence page. What are your plans for what appers on this page? Are you thinking that this is the same as your "CriteriaMet" field?
For a manually-issued badge, I think that the issuer should just be able to add some (learner-specific) text. And possibly upload a file or at least some basic html?
For automatically-issued badges, i.e. those issued on course completion, what should be visible? I guess some information about the course/s (title, description, category??) and what activities were completed in order to complete the course/s? I know there's a balance here between giving the badge-viewer enough information, and keeping the details of a course secret to the issuing organisation.
And one minor thing - I think that the OBI spec calls for a badge version number, so do you need to add this to the "add/edit badge" pages?
Best wishes,
Tim Newham [Think Associates]
Hi Tim,
Thanks a lot for your thoughts!
The concept of evidence is not quite clear to me yet, and we have lots of discussion in our team about what kind of information should be included into evidence. Because evidence is an optional field according to the badge metadata spec, we will try to get it to be automatically generated in first implementations, and will think about more complex solution later. At the moment, what we think we can do is to include the list of specific criteria that were met to earn the badge if there were multiple criteria, or the name of the issuer if it was awarded manually. I would imagine evidence to be a url link to some kind of public page available to assessors (or other interested parties). Also, I really like your idea to include some information about the courses if they were among criteria, just enough to understand what earner had to learn/do to get the badge.
We are having a call with OBI developers on Friday and will discuss this kind of questions with them to make sure we are on the right track. I will keep this thread updated on any news.
About version, as far as I know it is not actually version of the badge but rather a version of the specification the badge manifest is compatible with (https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Assertions).
Yuliya
Thanks Yuliya,
A comment re awarding criteria. This may be implicit in the 'Completing an activity or set of several activities (viewing an activity as a part of it)' point I see in the draft spec, but I'd like to see a finer control than just 'completion/non-completion'. I'd like to see a UI where I can set a minimum grade, etc, for a badge to be awarded. For example, I can see wanting to award a 'particularly helpful forum member' badge to a student that gets a minimum X number of 'Very Cool' ratings from their fellow students on their posts. This would be similar but distinct to setting of criteria in the current completion and conditional activities functionality. I may want to have different criteria for the 'completion' of an activity and the awarding of a badge relating to that activity.
Thanks for your work!
Martin
Hi Martin,
Thank you for your feedback! I think it's a very good idea and we have already had similar discussions about extending our criteria. For the first stage of the project, we are looking at implementing badge awards based on simple and most straightforward criteria. At the same time we will try to make sure that the way we develop criteria will allow extending them or adding new types of criteria at later stages.
Yuliya
Thanks everyone who has provided us with their feedback so far!
The final technical specifications are now complete and available on github for review https://github.com/totara/openbadges-docs. Any additional feedback would be appreciated, as we are starting development very soon .
We aim to have the first phase of the project complete by mid January 2013.
Yuliya
Hi Yuliya
I'd love to have badges available for my learning project, so I would be happy to Beta test if you need a group. I will have two groups of ten using iPads for a Learning to Learn pilot program. It will wrap emotional intelligence, research and critical thinking around units from Information Technology. Course will run from late Jan 2013 to May 2013.
Regards
Jenni
Hi Jenni,
Thank you! We'll be definitely looking for users to test our implementations once we are ready. I will keep you updated on how it goes.
Yuliya
Thanks Yuliya
Is it okay to ask around about when that might be, or is that a silly question?
I'm pleased to report that Open Badges has been integrated into Moodle in time for the 2.5 release (the next major release).
Now that it is part of core Moodle it has it's own discussion forum:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=8085
So I'd encourage you to subscribe and post any new questions or ideas there.
Simon
Yulya:
Our concept is to create the online learning experience for adults for 16 hours. At the end of each four hour experience, learners will comeplete an activity; once four activities are completed, we would like the learner to receive the first badge.
Then the learner can move to the next course for 16 hours.
Like this we propose three courses, if someone completes only two, they get a different badge with different graphic;; if they do all three, they will have a different graphic in the badge
Does this make sense? We will be ready to offer the courses at no cost to teachers across the globe at no cost in June 2013 but would love to pilot this in March. Will you have the Moodle plug-in by March 2013?
Hi Richard, Not at all surprised to see you leading this and (as always!) innovating and being right at the cutting edge of things. Can't wait to see the results of this.
All the best to everyone in Wellington Jerome
Also watching with bated breath.
Mandy
Hi, really keen to know what stage you are at with the badges block. I believe it could make such a difference in keeping our learners and engaged and complete courses. I think you developing a very powerful incentive tool and can't wait to be able to utilise it , excellent work.
Kay
Kay,
If I remember correctly, at the Mahara UK conference last year Richard said he was hopeful it would be around the end of this year (2013).
I'm sure Richard (or someone else) will correct me if I'm wrong.
Hi Kay,
We are at testing stage right now and looking at submitting our implementations for code review. I am not quite sure how long it will take, but we'll do our best to get it into Moodle as soon as possible.
Yuliya
I'm pleased to report that Open Badges has been integrated into Moodle in time for the 2.5 release (the next major release).
Now that it is part of core Moodle it has it's own discussion forum:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=8085
So I'd encourage you to subscribe and post any new questions or ideas there.
Simon
I'm pleased to report that Open Badges for Moodle is now in alpha and ready for initial testing!
The code is available on github here:
https://github.com/totara/openbadges
You can install your own site, or you can try out our test site here:
http://openbadgestotara.elearning.catalyst.net.nz/
We've disabled the external backpack connections and admin access on the test site but you can play around as a teacher (to create badges) or a student (to earn them).
Here are the login credentials:
username: teacher
password: teacher
username: student
password student
Some caveats:
1. Please don't use this code on a production yet. We are still fixing bugs and may need to make some breaking changes which will prevent you upgrading to a stable release.
2. This first release provides a basic (non-javascript) UI which we need for accessibility. We are planning on adding some more interactivity but wanted to get the basics working first. So please understand if you find some areas of the UI a little slow to use (particularly setting up criteria).
3. We haven't yet finished the full set of unit tests. We are working on that now.
4. We are also working on user documentation. For now, the specs give a reasonable description of the functionality:
http://docs.moodle.org/dev/openbadges
https://github.com/totara/openbadges-docs
5. We will be updating the github repository regularly and in order to keep the code organised and up to date with master we'll be rebasing and pushing forced updates so if you clone the repository you'll probably need to do hard reset when you want to update your local repository (you won't be able to just do a pull).
Aside from those issues, we would welcome any feedback, bug reports, etc. Once we've got the last few issues resolved we'll be pushing the code for integration review so if you'd like to see this in Moodle I'd encourage you to vote on the bug in the tracker:
https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-35073
Thanks,
Simon
Oh also we have enabled debugging on the test site so please let us know if you come across any errors while testing.
Simon
Great work Simon from another Open Badges fan!
I'm going to move this discussion thread into the Future major features forum to ensure it receives maximum exposure. (Everyone, you'll need to subscribe to the Future major features forum in order to receive notification of further replies to this thread.)
Thanks Helen - I should have mentioned that all the hard work of developing this module has been done by Yuliya, so thanks should be directed to her!
Simon
I started some preliminary user documentation. You can find it at http://docs.moodle.org/dev/OpenBadges_User_Documentation.
Please lte me know if something is not clear or require more information.
Yuliya
Hi Yuliya
If that's your prelimary user documentation, which to me is already very comprehensive, then I can't wait for the final user documentation.
Keep up the good work and I am looking forward to the next iteration of this marvellous plugin.
Frankie Kam
Hi Simon
I just had a look at the Github link of https://github.com/totara/openbadges
and it seems to me like there's an entire distro of Moodle (all 39+ Megabytes of it). Sorry to ask a silly question, how do I install OpenBadges?
Frankie Kam
Hi Frankie,
We are aiming at integrating this feature into Moodle core. So, it is not a separate plugin or module.
Yuliya
I'm pleased to report that Open Badges has been integrated into Moodle in time for the 2.5 release (the next major release).
Now that it is part of core Moodle it has it's own discussion forum:
https://moodle.org/mod/forum/view.php?id=8085
So I'd encourage you to subscribe and post any new questions or ideas there.
Simon
Simon,
This looks really great! I'm excited to see so much progress, and I'm excited to see that Moodle will be the first of the major LMS systems out there to implement badges (at least that I have seen). I wanted to make sure that you all knew about some work that Moodlerooms is starting on redoing Outcomes. It seems like there will be some key points of integration between the two. For example, we may want to award badges once a user has achieved certain outcomes, etc.
If you are interested, here is the specification: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Outcomes_Specification
Specifically, I'm guessing we are going to want to look at how badges and Outcomes interact on the User's Profile. I did some mockups previously about how this might work, where I just put placeholders for Badges (since I knew that you were already working on it). Take a look and let me know what you think: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Outcomes_Student_Specification#Profile_Page_-_Overview
Looks great! Keep up the good work!
Phill
Hi Phill,
That sounds like a really interesting idea! And great work on Outcomes spec! I especially like your changes to the user profile page and agree that it should be of a more pluggable nature.
As for integration with openbadges, there shouldn't be any problems with adding new criteria once your part of implementations is done. I was trying to design criteria for badges to be more or less easy to add by just extending badge_criteria class. I will certainly look into adding Outcomes to the exisiting criteria!
Yuliya
So excited about this!
Just a note to let you know that we have decommissioned the Totara test site (linked above) now that 2.5 is out. If anyone wants to try badges out they should now use the Moodle demo at:
Thanks,
Simon
Hi everybody,
I would like to thank all the people who is working on this great project, i've been testing it on a clon of my production site. It's very impressive what you have completed so far.
Anyway, i have a little concern: This Moodle distro was built on a former stable release of Moodle? or this is also an experimental release?
Regards,
Giovani
Open badges are now part of the core Moodle 2.5 release, out in May. It's currently still being tested and tweaked.