I've enjoyed this discussion and am excited to follow and contribute to development.
For the purposes of brainstorming, I wanted to share the techniques we've used to badge Moodle. This may need to be split to a different discussion, since it isn't a suggestion for the Totara module; I just thought it would be falling on the right ears in this thread.
At the Chester County IU in Pennsylvania, USA, I've used Moodle's conditional activity settings to help users unlock graphical badges during a course. Your solution will be much more portable and extendable; this just gives our participants a Moodle experience of earning badges, which can be implemented by any Moodle teacher interested in the concepts of serious games for learning.
Attached is a screenshot (sorry for the small size - limited to 50KB! Will create a full-size gallery if there's interest). What we've done:
- Moodle sections are "levels" in our course, and using conditional sections, users "level up" (reveal the next section) when they earn required badges;
- Labels are created with the badge name, icon, required or not, approximate time to earn, bonus points if any, and some other "flavor" indicators (such as whether the badge is peer-nominated or instructor-approved).
- Hovering on a badge icon reveals details about what you'll accomplish in earning the badge.
- Conditional activities are configured, so that the badge is "unlocked", or becomes visible, only when conditions are met in other related quests, or activities.
- Lang files are edited so that the "Restricted" message on a conditional activity instead references "unlocking" the badge when activities are completed.
- Gradebook terminology has been changed to Points - a minor and perhaps superficial change, but the gradebook becomes a bank instead of a measure of performance. Only extra, bonus items are worth points. Everything else is worth badges, so your badges-earned list is what you seek to build up.
- The Checklist module and block are also used in this course, to provide a visual indicator of progress through badges and activities. We are considering overriding the perms in this module to allow all participants to see everyone's progress and badges, which is more supportive of a game mentality.
I hope this is helpful and/or inspiring in some ways! Again, I look forward to closely following the new wiki and contributing in any way I can.
Laura Mikowychok
Chester County IU 24, Pennsylvania, USA
