Elements Needed

Staff Resources
Technical Requirements
Use Cases
Why should UBC do badges
Value to Flexible Learning

Executive Summary

Digital badges are being leveraged by institutions of higher education as both a motivation and recognition tool that provides information about what the learner knows and can do. The UBC Open Badges Pilot Project aims to develop a proof of concept in the issuing of open digital badges at the University of British Columbia. Several use-cases are proposed to contextualize the proof of concept each. All of them will attempt to answer questions around issuing badges (i.e. who gets to issue badges) , earning badges (i.e. how will learners earn badges), and storage of badges (i.e. where will they be stored) in different contexts. An evaluation will be done in order to gather the lessons learned and the next steps forward if a university-wide system is implemented.

Project Owner	Michelle Lamberson, Managing Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology Simon Bates, Academic Director, Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology
Project Manager	TBD
Project Team	Partner Units Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology Teaching and Learning Professional Development Will Engle, Teaching and Learning Strategist Zack Lee, Educational Resources Developer Cindy Underhill, Learning Resource Design Strategist Lucas Wright, Educational Technology Specialist Teaching and Learning Technologies Scott McMillan, Applications Developer / Sysadmin Novak Rogic, Web Strategy Manager Joe Zerdin Emerging Technologies Analyst Distance and Blended Learning Janet McCracken, Instructional Designer/Project Manager Nicole Ronan, Web Designer/Programmer
Project Deadline	Pilot to be developed during summer 2013 Delivered in the fall term 2013 Final report delivered by February 2014

Project Need: Supporting Learners

Badges have been used quite extensively in a variety of contexts (e.g. scouts, gaming) as both evidence of a person’s skills and learning and as a motivation tool for people to gain additional skills and learning. Higher education institutions, including universites like Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of California have begun to experiment with digital badges as both an alternative means of providing recognition and motivation for learning. The use of badges in higher education is being spearheaded by the Mozilla Foundation, creators of Firefox, who recognized the range of skills participants demonstrated during their 2010 Mozilla Festival (MozFest) during their "maker sessions". These same skills were not represented or in some cases recognized due to a lack of formal certification from educational institutions. The Open Badge Initiative (OBI) was developed to bridge the gap in the recognition of out of school/class learning that many people go through on a regular basis.

UBC has long embraced online learning and with the recent attention to flexible and open pedagogies, interest and awareness in providing alternative methods of motivation and credentialing has also increased. Implementing a badge system intersects with various initiatives and conversations around campus and digital badges may provide an opportunity to support initiatives that would like to provide evidence for a learner’s work and experience outside of traditional credentialing. For example, open courses, such as the Arts One Digital Project, has expressed an interest in using badges to increase participation by learners who are not formally enrolled in the course. Additionally, courses in UBC's MOOC pilot project, which do not award credit, have also expressed interest in awarding digital badges as a motivation tool to help increase engagement in their courses.

The University’s strategic plan on student learning asks the community to implement a plan for the understanding, delivery and assessment of enriched educational experiences. Conversations revolved around developing a companion transcript that records a students co-curricular and extracurricular activities. At the same time, conversations around eportfolios have been continuing as a space to document a learner’s development throughout their time at UBC and beyond.

The CTLT is critically engaged in exploring the issues of recognition and motivation of learners. How do we reward and recognize the professional development of instructors and graduate students when it comes to their teaching? How do recognize outstanding learners in a MOOC who have provided help to their peers? How can we provide a personalized learning path for community members who varying skills and experiences? How can we connect and share our clients and colleagues expertise in order to build capacity beyond CTLT? Badges can provide an opportunity to explore potential solutions to these questions.

With the university determined to invest in a flexible learning initiative, there is a need to recognize the learning that happens everywhere, such as student-organized events, open courses, international exchange opportunities, and professional development activities, that provides added-value to the learning experience at UBC.

Goal	Develop a proof of concept badging pilot as a way to assess the feasibility of a university-wide badging system, including resourcing needs, technical frameworks, and legal/privacy implications
Objectives	Develop a small pilot project based on different use cases for badges at UBC Generate understanding about full resource, administrative, and technical needs of supporting badges at UBC. Create a white paper on our experience with formal recommendations for next steps
Alignment with CTLT Mandate	The intention behind the badges project aims to put CTLT in a leadership role to innovate on approaches to teaching and learning, to advance the understanding of how technology can advance the learning environment, and identify questions for further research.
Project Scope	The project shall focus on two different use cases for issuing bades: A CTLT Professional Development track An open course The project is currently a collaboration between members of the Distance and Blended Learning team, Teaching and Learning Professional Development team, and the Teaching and Learning Technologies team.Depending on the identified and chosen use cases, CTLT will also collaborate with other UBC units such as the Learning Commons and Continuing studies.
Strategies	Gather expressions of interest from units on who would like to commit to a pilot project. Design the learning path and criteria for earning badges Implement a low-impact hosting solution for the badges Conduct focus groups with “issuers” and “earners” Blog ongoing development and progress Create reports and documents on either the UBC Wiki or Google Docs

Environmental Scan

Enables CTLT to experiment with an emerging open standard as well as an emerging trend in teaching and learning
Engage the UBC community in different ways to recognize student learning and professional development
Assess a complementary form of credentialing
Articulate connections between flexible learning, enriched educational experiences, eportfolios, and learning technologies

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder Group	Issues/Perspectives	Impact/Influence
CTLT TLPD	Need to find new ways to document/recognize learning/professional/skills development Find ways to integrate the use of eportfolios Need to update the Passport of Participation program	Contributes to opportunities for flexible learning Further understanding of how learning works Benefits from a renewed institutional focus on eportfolios Can impact discussions on professional development for faculty members and graduate students
CTLT TLT	Further enhance the value of the WordPress platform for the UBC community
CTLT DBL	Offer flexible approaches to learner motivation and engagement in blended and distant environments
Instructors	Need to represent their skills/proficiency in pedagogical techniques Need to build and/or collect evidence for their teaching portfolio Need to recognize student skills/achievements beyond grades	Better representation/skills gained through their teaching experience More evidence for their portfolios Better understanding of professional development paths
Students	Need to represent skills/experience gained from opportunities within and outside of the classroom setting Want to personalize the learning path during their time at UBC	Recognition of achievements/experience within and outside the classroom Greater understanding of their own learning and career paths Gain “institutional” representation of employable skills gained while at UBC

Risk Analysis

Risk	Probability	Severity	Action to Prevent
Participants do not want to use the Mozilla Backpack due to privacy reasons	Unlikely	Severe	Clearly outline the benefits of the open standards behind badges as well as the community behind it
Technology implementation is more complex than first explored	Possible	Moderate	Assess integration with current WordPress platforms Extensively test relevant plugins Plan for potential alternatives
Badges are not valued by earners	Possible	Minimal	Design several criteria for earning badges based on program/course-based goals (e.g. task-based, challenge-based, participation-based, assessed work) Clearly outline the benefits of the open standards behind badges as well as the community behind it

Resource Requirements

Team Member	Task	Time
Scott McMillan	Implement required technology/software
Will Engle	Gather expressions of interest from other units Liaise with Mozilla for potential support and collaboration
Zack Lee	Draft initial report and project proposal
Joe Zerdin	Research other implementations and use cases from other institutions
Nicole Ronan	Design badges
Cindy Underhill	Develop learning paths for participants

Timeline

Task	Responsibility	Deadline
Draft & submit pilot project proposal	Zack/WIll	April 2013
Proposal approved by Senior Management Team (SMT)	kele/Marianne	May 2013
Scope out expressions of interest from other units	Everyone	June 2013
Choose 2 - 3 use-cases for pilot project	Everyone	June 2013
Implement software/technology requirements	Scott/Novak	July 2013
Design & Develop badge earning criteria		August 2013
Test out software and earning criteria		August 2013
Use cases programs/courses starts		September 2013
Use cases programs/courses ends		December 2013
Data Collection (e.g. focus groups, interviews) & Assessment		February 2014
Draft white paper		March 2014
Team review of white paper		March 2014
Submission of white paper to SMT		April 2014

Budget

Item	Quantity/Time	Notes	Cost

Evaluation

CTLT and partner units will evaluate the pilot project with particular foci on the following areas:

Software/Technology

What are the resource requirements for scaling up the badging infrastructure?
Document tiered support needed during the pilot process.
Document development process on a blog on UBC Blogs.

Privacy/Security

What are the privacy preferences of badge earners if we do not develop a locally hosted badge backpack?
Information will be gathered through online surveys and focus groups.

Earner Learning Experience

Were earners motivated to earn badges? Did it motivate them to go further and earn other badges? How did it compare with other programs/classes? Do they plan to share their badges? Do they want badges? What other learning contexts can badges be applied?
Information will be gathered through online surveys and focus groups.

Issuer Experience

What was the experience of the issuer? Can we expand the issuers beyond just programs or classes? At what level? Did units/programs/instructors find value in awarding badges? Did they notice a change from their learners? What other learning contexts can badges be applied?
What recommendations can be made about a process for deciding who can issue UBC Badges
A post-program/course evaluation will be conducted with participating units, instructors, facilitators.

Sustainability

Is this something UBC can support going forward? What are the next steps?
Answers will be derived from an analysis of previously mentioned focus areas.

Success Measures

Develop a workflow for creating and earning badges in a variety of learning contexts.
Creation of a “light” or simple technical infrastructure for issuing full metadata enabled or baked badges that are compliant with the OBI standard.
Ability for earners to display badges in relevant spaces such as ePortfolios, UBC Blogs and other social media spaces.
Establish resource requirements for feasibility and sustainability of a university-wide badging system.
Publish a white paper to be shared with the broader UBC/teaching and learning community.

Sustainability

The badges pilot project is meant to assess the feasibility and sustainability of a university-wide badging system. Discussions on the future of badges at UBC will be informed by what we have learned during the pilot.

All project resources such as planning documents, project status updates, and research resources are and will be made available through the UBC Wiki and UBC Blogs. The final white paper will also be shared publicly through both systems.

Communication

Primary project communication and planning will be done through the UBC Wiki with the category of “Badges”
A blog will be started to contain reflections from team members
Monthly meetings to touch base on development and project status

Privacy/Security Considerations

The Open Badge Initiative is developed by the Mozilla Foundation, a US-based non-profit group. They have taken the lead in developing the badge infrastructure and metadata standards. Standard badge metadata will include the earner’s name with the added function, if implemented, of linking to the earner’s work. Some Open Badge implementation enables earners to send their badges to a storage server/backpack run by Mozilla, which in turn is hosted in the US.

From initial research of the badge infrastructure, it is a complex system that will take significant resources to properly implement at UBC. Current WordPress plugins creates and stores the badges on UBC servers. Once awarded though, earners can only receive and store badges via Mozilla’s backpack.

For a relatively easier implementation of the pilot project, we will be using already available technologies to issue, award and store badges. Participation in the pilot will be optional. Badge earners will be informed of the privacy concerns and will be asked to sign a waiver.