I have been wanting for some time now to learn how to make and issue open badges as I have been conducting workshops and other research projects over the years where some sort of alternative accreditation of learning would have been beneficial. I am thinking mostly along the lines of informal learning (more specifically, lifelong learning) where learners could by some mechanism demonstrate that they are investing in their own learning outside of a formal organizational structure.

I know of the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach, the broader political and economic issues involved, and the (perceived) cheapening of education that some view a natural result of this activity. I don’t inherently embrace or disown any of those perspective, but I do feel as though it is our job as learning professionals to explore every avenue for learning that is presented to us. I also feel it is our duty to make it clear that learning is always a mediation between tools, content, and intent. If before it was diplomas, parchment, insignias, pencils, and papers, then I am perfectly happy to state that now it might be badges, code, and pngs. All of this might be appropriated by business and made profitable (and thus creating a hierarchy of access); all of this might be disowned by academia and forever given the (open) badge of shame to carry with it like a curse. I am speaking in hyperbole, obviously. Academically and from a research perspective, open badges are a complex amalgamation of so much cultural, political, and economic capital (and therefore interesting as a research subject). Pragmatically, they allow me to extend my teaching (and hopefully my students’ learning) well beyond any sort of formal educational structure. This post, that long preamble aside, is about this latter pragmatism. How do I make and issue badges?

Smaller preamble: I have smart(er) friends (than me). One such friend is David Fox, with whom I worked together with both here and here. He knows things, he does things, he writes things. Many things. So I turned to him as I couldn’t quite get my head around how one made and issued badges. He put his ample intellect to it and so what I relay here is mostly (almost exclusively) his doing. Hopefully it is worthwhile to some of you. In later posts, I will start outlining how I plan to use these badges as I have already documented ten of them. I will give you a hint: it rhymes with lobile mearning. I suspect my colleague Pekka and I can use these for upcoming field activity workshops we will be conducting. I suspect I can use these in Korea and in another project I am about to kick off elsewhere.

Again, let me emphasize that what follows is mostly his doing (even his writing). But I thought it might be useful to my audience. First what you need followed by how you need to do it.

At the bottom of this post, as a sort of appendix, I have included the text I used for each of the files (and by “I have included” I mean I basically copied what Dave told me to say) as well as some of the sites that Dave found to help us along.

Some images below to visually represent some of this. On WordPress, the plugin I am using to display the badges allows you to show certain badges for certain categories or tags or pages. Quite useful if you want to only display a specific set of badges for prospective employers or researchers or what have you.

Again, Dave found these, but I wanted to pass them along as well in case anyone found this useful and wanted to try for themselves.

Tutorials

Metadata Standards (what you can include in these files)

Where to Bake the Badge

Files (What Information They Include)

Issuer.json

Criteria.txt

Assertion.json

Badge.json