- Read all the document sources regarding Open Badges I could find. This included;
- openbadges.org
- mozilla open badges wiki
- github open badges site
- google group
- monitoring of social media
- attending the weekly community calls
- listening to the Mozilla IRC
- With all this reading I began to identify trends in discussion and frequently asked questions
- I harvested these trends into the Mozilla wiki as new FAQ entries
- I continued my work and moved my work over to general and technical etherpads until I completely reviewed the google group in its entirety.
- I then edited these etherpad entries and put them into a staging area for review. Once the review period was over I moved them back out to respective wikis.
- These two wikis can be found at the following two links;
- Github technical wiki; https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/FAQ
- Mozilla general wiki; https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/FAQs
- Now I look for new FAQ entries as I continue to monitor all the Open Badges community sites and resources.
Highlights and Trends
What do I see as the highlights and trends (or lack thereof) within the discussion around the beta release of Open Badges?
- Most technical questions are with implementing the issuer role.
- Non-technical people seem to struggle with the technical issues. This would seem obvious, I do believe the Open Badges partners and community are a less technical and a more pedagogical crowd. This should be expected due to Open Badges playing more in the educational space. The technical challenges should also not come as a surprise given the beta release. I have every faith the open badges platform will become easy for the non-technical badge implementer.
- Badge integrity and validation (assertion) is important to people.
- Badge systems design is important and still at its early stages. I believe this is due to the broad variety of learning situations badges can be issued.
- People are wrapping there heads around badges both from a skills and knowledge perspective and a resume, cv and job search perspective.
- People are really interested in how open badges are going to work and be displayed within the whole social media landscape.
- Life-long learning seems to be the largest consideration for where badges will be utilized and hold most benefit.
- Discussion around assessment and alternate accreditation hasn't yet materialized in force.
- Project seems to be trending toward higher education and academia. Its an attractive place to play. I'd hope it would stay focused on the more common places of life-long learning.
- Not every FAQ entry harvested needs to have an audience, particularly some may disappear due to open badges being beta.
