I think badges are a great way of motivating and giving recognition to students. I am glad to see that the community has seen fit to continue supporting them with the recent changes to Moodle to support Open Backpack, a big thank you!
My question is why can a student not share their badges straight from moodle to their Facebook / Linked or other social page. Seems pointless to earn a badge that you cannot boast about.
Thanks for any help / suggestions you may be able to offer.
Hi Kevin:
Good news that Moodle now supports the Backpack again. The Backpack is an example of the kind of free badge storing and display platform that needs to exist beyond the LMS for sustainability of issued badges. Others include Open Badge Passport (and CanCred Passport in Canada) and Credly and Badgr, which permit importing badges as part of their integrated badge issuing/sharing infrastrucuture.
The student would normally share badges from the permanent badge storage platform to social media because otherwise:
Badge rot is real... of course, decent shelf life is really only important for "resume worthy" badges with transferable value that employers might recognize. Otherwise, who cares: show off your badge to your friends for as long as it lasts. (though it does make it harder to take "resume worthy" badges more seriously...). Plugins to specialized badge issuing platforms are available for those who need to maintain badges outside an LMS, whether for sustainability or maybe because they also badge outside the LMS.
The other aspect to consider is that Moodle, as an open source community-driven platform with many demands on it, may be reluctant to chase after the APIs and business models of for-profit platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a good example: it updated its API earlier this year, which broke automated publishing of badges to Certifications for all badge sharing platforms. The broader Open Badge community still trying to get that one fixed - the problem is not only technical.
Thanks for that explanation, Don. It clarified the underlying issues with badges very nicely. I do understand the complications of 'badge rot', but it would be nice to see simple social media sharing of badges for Moodle users similar to that available through other learning programs/apps.
