102 Quick Issuing

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Issuing Badges through an OBI Partner.


Issue badges to your Earners, the easy way! Task: Upload a badge to an OBI partner.

What is OBI?

The Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI) is free software and an open technical standard that allows an organization to create, issue, and verify badges. Because OBI is a standard, learners can earn badges across and a variety of issuers. This OBI standard also includes standard metadata to be read by employers and institutions and works with the Mozilla Backpack.
>>Read more about the OBI.

What is an OBI Provider?

As you read previously, an issuer is an individual or institution that offers badges to ‘earners’ for successfully completed ‘learning experiences’. They handle all of ‘issuing’ of the badges, allowing ‘earners’ to push badges into their Backpack. In this lesson, we will specifically be looking at a few examples of OBI Issuers who are actually Providers. Providers allow individuals and organizations to create their own learning experiences while using their system to create, store, and issue badges.

How do you issue badges through an OBI Provider?

Step 1. Develop a learning experience.

Peer to Peer University (P2PU)
learning experiences and badge issuing
P2PU is one example of a Provider that not only allows individuals to issue badges, but also to create and distribute learning experiences.
>>Read more about P2PU.
>>Create a Course or Challenge on P2PU.
>>Take a P2PU course on making and implementing badges on P2PU.

Step 2. Develop a badge(s) for the learning experience.

Your next step is to actually design the badge(s). If you don’t have much design experience, you may want to ask a friend for help.
>>Read Billy Meinke’s article on how to make a badge.
>>Read the second point in this Badg.us article, filled with resources for creating badges.
>>Take the P2PU Badge Maker Course.

Step 3. Issue the badges.

If you are already using an OBI and learning experience provider like P2PU, they will handle the issuing for you. However, if you have developed your learning experience on a personal site, such as a Wordpress blog or learning management system, then you will need an OBI Provider like one of the following. You will have to follow this procedure for every badge.

Badges.p2pu.org
Here you can create a Badge, submit a Project for a Badge, or, if you are an "Expert" and already possess the Badge, award it to someone else.
>>Visit the P2PU Badges site.
>>Create a badge.

Badg.us
badge issuing
Badg.us is an experimental service used to issue badges. Simply upload a badge graphic, plus in the meta info, and link to the url provided. Services include a nifty QR code generator for earners to claim their badges.
>>Visit the badg.us site.
>>View recently created badges.

OpenBadgesUA
badge issuing
OpenBadgesUA is another badge issuing service. Services include displaying information for social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
>>Visit the OpenBadgesUA site.
>>Read more about the OpenBadgeUA Displayers.

Discussion Prompt:
Task: Upload one of your badges to an OBI partner.
We want to see your progress!

  1. Show us your badges! Include the link to your badge on an OBI site.
  2. Tell us a bit about your badge making progress.
  3. Did you run into any problems or do you have any questions for the group.

Task Discussion


  • Kerstin Namuth said:

    I have created a draft of a Nifty Badge in P2PU (well, not so nifty, actually).

    For the pic I put a photograph onto a badge background. The background was compiled in a badge creator tool, can't remember which one, I think it was https://www.openbadges.me/ .

    http://badges.p2pu.org/en/badge/view/278/

     

    This badge is only a draft, but I intend to create a  series of badges for our Moodle courses for teachers.

    I am still not quite sure how to distribute the badge. Is it enough to put up a description on our site together with a link to my badge in P2PU? Or should I take the badge through the baking process  at Mozilla Open Badges for it to become portable?

    on Jan. 7, 2014, 9:58 a.m.

  • Pelle said:

    1. http://badges.p2pu.org/en-us/badge/view/251/

    2. I made a quick sketch in Google Draw. I used one of our logos. I will not put much effort in this because if we will continue with this one of our art directors will design the badge according to the grafical manual.

    3. I tried Badge.us, but it added a black background which didn´t loog nice. 

    on Dec. 6, 2013, 4:50 a.m.

    Kerstin Namuth said:

    Hi again, Pelle,

    Looks great, and you already have one taker. Congrats!

    I am not quite I understand how this badge hosting at P2PU works. How did you do it? Embed a link on your website and encourage people to go to P2PU and claim the badge?

    Kerstin

    on Jan. 7, 2014, 10:04 a.m. in reply to Pelle

    Pelle said:

    Yes. I have already aproved one person who is entitled to this badge. Though I am not apporoved for this course ande the design of the badge is not according to our grafic manual. 

    The person found the badge herself. I haven´t annonced this in an other way than blogged a little about it.

    on Jan. 8, 2014, 3:21 a.m. in reply to Kerstin Namuth

  • ToddP said:

    OK. so I am stumped. I am not a coder so therein may be the problem. 

    I created a badge at badge.us using a ,png I already created. http://badg.us/en-US/badges/badge/ASTDATL-Conference-badge-session I awarded the badge to myself but when I tried to add it to my backpack I got an error that I am not logged in (which I was using my persona).  I have tried to figure out how to create badges manually using the assertion string but I have come to the conlusion that I have to own a website or blog (not just piggyback on Wordpress) and I get rather lost manually coding the assertion.

    I recently presented a session at a conference dealing with badges, eportfolios and learning artifacts,  and want to issue a badge to each attendee who completed the session. I can issue using their email address ( tested it on an old address I do not use) and the message arrives but when you select the link to claim the badge you cannot do anything with it, like push it to your backpack.

    My goal is to create badges for other sessions and workshops I present as well as college courses I teach on Blackboard.

    Got any feedback? 

    . 

    on Aug. 16, 2013, 2:25 p.m.

  • Peter Pasque said:

    Show us your badges! Include the link to your badge on an OBI site.

    http://badg.us/en-US/badges/badge/Badging-Skyline

    Tell us a bit about your badge making progress.

    I created a badge in Photoshop and made 4 other badge images at the same time that I will upload soon.  I created all 5 badges at the same time in an attempt to create uniformity and a brand, if you will, for our badges.  I uploaded the .png files to badg.us and added the necessary data and there we have it!  

    I am a little unclear as to how much information specifying the criteria for earning the badge should be included.  So, I looked at a handful of existing badges and feel that I will need to be more specific in this area when I begin issuing badges.

    Did you run into any problems or do you have any questions for the group.

    I used badg.us to host my badge, mainly because I have few colleagues who use this service and it was straightforward and simple to navigate.  Does anyone have a rationale for using a different badge hosting service?

    on June 11, 2013, 1:47 p.m.

  • Peter Rawsthorne said:

    2. I use gimp to make my badges. I watch a number of online videos to learn the different elements of making badges with gimp. I also used graphics from the noun project within my badges. I am increasingly attracted to sites that build nice badges... (you provide some links in this task, I also like credly) my concern with these sites is they don't give enough flexibility in where the criteria and evidence attributes of the badge can be located...

    on April 4, 2013, 9:01 a.m.

    Peter Pasque said:

    Thanks for the link to the Noun Project, it is an interesting resource and will (hopefully) help me create Badges that illustrate the overarching concept of the task.

    on June 12, 2013, 9:03 a.m. in reply to Peter Rawsthorne

  • Peter Rawsthorne said:

    1. I have created a few badge systems following the martial arts colour scheme. Some more serious than others;

    These could all be considered badge systems.

    on April 3, 2013, 10:46 p.m.

    Peter Pasque said:

    The simple rubric style table you laid out for the tiered badges makes a lot of sense; it's easy to understand and navigate.  I have a few questions regarding this design.  

    • Are all of your badges tiered?
    • Do you create a table like this for all of your badges, or just tiered badges? 
    • Do you have a giant table for all of the badges available in one course?

    I appreciate the thought you've put into this design and look forward to learning more.

    on June 12, 2013, 9:08 a.m. in reply to Peter Rawsthorne

    Peter Rawsthorne said:

    Are all my badges tiered?

    No not all my badges or tiered. I do believe some of my arrangements are a star or a network. I do think badge organization should follow the organization of the knowledge domain. I do think it would be more of a network of related subjects, skills, events... that as they are earned would form clusters or groupings. I organized as a tiered approach for I was wanting to relate the categorization like the color scheme of the martial arts belt system.

    I do believe the work Mozilla has been doing around badge system design is excellent and I believe they are wanting to stay away from the tiered or hierarchical approach. But I do think many humans organize in hierarchies...

    Do I create a table for all my badges, or just tiered badges?

    No, I don't create a table for all my badge systems. I do believe it is important to provide some way to organize, display and describe the badge system. A table is one way... and due to my using wikiveristy for the mobile app dev course, the table seemed like the best way to go.

    Do I have a giant table for all badges in one course?

    I don't see creating one giant table to describe all the badges. There does need to be some way of describing the badge system as a whole. I believe it would help people understand the learning pathways within the badge system if there was a "curriculum" or "learning journey" map. I do see that Mozilla Webmaker is doing great work here as an example. See Erin Knights post; http://erinknight.com/post/29830945702/webmaker-badges I also see the badge system and approach created by the Khan academy is also an interesting example of displaying a whole badge system.

    on June 13, 2013, 9:45 a.m. in reply to Peter Pasque