This is the blog post describing completion of the
third task of the OnPhD candidacy challenge. In this post I detail what I am going to do as my contribution to furthering human knowledge.
My contribution will fall within the intersection of education technology, systems architecture and heutagogy. My current thinking toward this area of focus will be to create a badge clustering portal that will allow people
to gather and create badges from the different
non-obi compliant badges systems. The benefit of this would be to support my thesis that we need a way of collecting together peoples learning to provide validation and recognition. My working thesis is;
The ability to validate and cluster all the events of life-long learning, regardless of their origin, will provide the required alternative to emancipate the self-directed learner from the limits of traditional accreditation. This shift will enable every learner, regardless of approach, to pursue learning with the same level of recognition as learners in traditional institutions.
- Detail your ideas around a significant contribution. (remember this can be altered as your knowledge of the domain of study deepens, it is an iterative process)
Build a web portal, with support for mobile devices, which allows a user to consolidate there badges from many non-obi compliant badge systems.
- The technology platform will utilize a MVC approach using HTML5, CSS3, PhP and MondoDB. Rationalization of this technology stack will be in a follow-up blog post.
- Solution architecture will be focused around open platforms and standards. A strong service orientation using RESTful type approaches for integration.
- Features will always look toward assisting the self-directed learner in consolidating thier accreditations.
- How are you going to publish?
I will publish frequently on my blog with papers written for major project milestones and upon completion of significant design elements. I will publish in two primary locations; first, utilize online open journals and second, pubish on wikiversity.
- Where will you engage your network of peers and mentors?
Online! I will communicate regularly with my peers and mentors, both directly and via online communities. I will seek feedback with all my regular blog posts and provide more formal engagement processes with all major publishing events. If engagement requires discussion I will ask to publish the video or audio chat. I will be very transparent through all my engagements. Peers and mentors will be aware of this before they are asked to engage.
- How is your work going to be peer reviewed?
Peer review will come via my publishing in the open, my regular and frequent engagements, and through blind peer review via the journals I utilize to publish my major works.
- How are your findings and data going to be published in the open?
All documents and data will be published in the open. People can request complete data sets and open API's will be made available. Note: privacy policies will be put in place regarding participant data.
- Describe how you know you are finished.
When users badge clusters are successfully rendered and shared from their user page within the web portal.
