SUMMARY

We recognize that assessments and certification/credentialing are important pieces of P2PU moving forward, so that learning is captured and made portable across other contexts. Creating an alternative assessment and certification path is important and critical for today's world where formal education options are limited and expensive, and where we see learning occurring outside of formal paths all the time.  Our current focus for this is using badges as the currency to capture and demonstrate learning, skills and reputation within the community.

There are two parallel tracks in motion: the badges/assessments for these courses and the open badge infrastructure.

TEAM 

• Erin Knight (Badge and Assessment Lead, P2PU and Mozilla Foundation)
• Brian Brennan (Lead Developer, Open Badge Infrastructure)
• Alan Webb (Badge Lead, SoSI)
• Pippa Buchanan (Community Manager, SoW, advisory role)
• Philipp Schmidt (Executive Director, P2PU, advisory role on assessments/badges)
• Ahrash Bissell (did initial background work, now in an advisory role) 

BADGES/ASSESSMENTS

BACKGROUND

Ahrash did some considerable work on the assessment background and frameworks.  His work is summarized here:

Starting point: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/p2pu/Assessment_and_Accreditation

Deep Dive on concrete examples: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/p2pu/Assessment_and_Accreditation/Webcraft_Assessments_-_detailed

BADGES - CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

We have done considerable work and thinking around badges for learning contexts.  We are working on a foundational badge paper.  The latest version can be found here:  http://bit.ly/badgepaper3

JANUARY BADGES PILOT

We are running a pilot of assessments and badges in the January sessions of School of Webcraft and School of Social Innovation. Below are links to the various resources that we are building out as we go.

Summary (written for SoW course organizers):

http://wiki.p2pu.org/Webcraft-Assessment 

SoW Badge/Assessment plan:

http://etherpad.mozilla.org:9000/webcraftassessment

SoSI Badge/Assessment plan:

http://etherpad.mozilla.org:9000/sosiassessments

TECHNICAL SUPPORT (aka - how to manage assessments and badge issuing)

We are going to use the OSQA environment to host the assessment challenges, manage the peer assessments and issue badges for all skill badges. 

http://qa.p2pu.org/

Requirements for supporting badges:

http://etherpad.mozilla.org:9000/osqabadges

PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Calls

We have a weekly SoW call where we discuss a number of SoW related issues, including updates on badges: http://pad.p2pu.org/webcraft

BADGE INFRASTRUCTURE

DESCRIPTION

In order to enable people to earn badges from wherever they are learning across the web, there needs to be a way to allow for individual badge issuers.  Any learner could collect badges from multiple sites, tied to a single identity and then share them out with various sites like a personal blog or LinkedIn. This infrastructure should be open to allow anyone to issue badges, and each learner to carry the badges with them across the Web or other contexts.

BACKGROUND

Josh's work on badges infrastructure, which plays into assessments http://joshuagay.org/blog/

PROTOTYPE

A prototype of the infrastructure was built at Drumbeat Festival in Barcelona.  The prototype was updated and advanced in early January 2011. A more complete and working prototype will be used for the January badge pilot.

BADGE INFRASTRUCTURE

We are aiming to have a working badge infrastructure in late 2011 that will provide:

• API/Metadata spec for independent badge issuers to use to issue badges, as well as for display sites to pull badges out
• Data Wallet/Backpack - central collection of badges and associated metadata, tied to open identity