Grants talk:IdeaLab/Open Badges for off-wiki credentials

Other certification programs

In my opinion, the big idea here is the interface with the Mozilla Open Badge tool set, and not the idea about having badges.

I know I have seen other proposals and discussions about developing a certification or badge system. If anyone knows where those conversations are, then please share. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:11, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

We are having a discussion at Wikimedia UK. Input from across the global community would be welcome. See Wikimedia UK and Open Badges. Fabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk) 09:44, 13 January 2015‎ (UTC)

I would participate in discussion but would prefer that discussion of the general concept happen on a wiki that I watch, like Meta-Wiki. Not much is happening on the UK wiki right now. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:39, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate your point, BR, but the discussion was started there because it is part of our Volunteer Strategy Review of which we are in the middle. Organisationally, we are leading up to making decisions on this, as well as the Education Programme extension - an area in which you have played a lead part. I kind of see the two as going together. From our point of view, there are two sides to this:

• Wikimedia UK making a decision as part of our strategy review
• A more global approach taking into account what various people are doing across the world

I would welcome ideas about how these two aspects can be handled so that both aspects (and indeed whatever initiatives other chapters may have) can be mutually supportive and we avoid duplication of efforts and create more synergy. Fabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk) 16:37, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

There are separate unrelated issues which could be discussed here.

1. Partnering with Mozilla, who would love to have Wikimedians incorporate their badges into Wikimedia community culture. I would support this also.
2. Reform of the Wikimedia education program. The Wiki Ed Foundation in the United States has taken over a lot of the roles that "campus ambassadors" used to do because of repeated evidence that points to the need for an online point person to consistently manage some aspects of classroom outreach, and because this person has to be paid staff. This is not such a complicated staff role, and if WM UK would like to hire this person, then I would support this person being funded in WM UK, especially if UK would have oversight in all English Wikipedia coursework outside the United States. The other reform is that there are three education program userrights in the software which are not being used as imagined and in my opinion are creating confusion, yet still must be used to manage education modules. More discussion needs to happen around that.
3. Centralized dialogue among multinational stakeholders about supporting outreach volunteers who get the userright to use the education modules. There is an asset here to be used and a lot of value being lost for as long as the assets in the education program are less available to volunteers. The problems are lack of documentation, lack of project management, lack of community support probably only for failure to request it, and lack of a centralized place to discuss the education modules.

I am willing to talk more but if the point is only to explore Mozilla badges, then I say yes these have lots of applications in lots of contexts. Talking about the education program seems to me to go far beyond the proposal on the Idealab page. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:36, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment:

1. I agree that it would best to keep this just to a discussion of badges here
2. Reform of the Wikimedia education program: I agree that more discussion is needed here. I am not sure to what extent WMUK is ready to step into the breach here though.
3. There is some discussion at Volunteer Supporters Network, which might be able to take this forward.

Fabian Tompsett (WMUK) (talk) 14:17, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

More examples

New blog post summarizing Sweden's use of Mozilla's Open Badge Infrastructure. There is also mention in the comments of another badge project that was submitted as an IEG. Just wanted to capture links here:

• New badges recognize Swedish students and teachers who contribute to Wikipedia (WMF blog)
• Grants:IEG/Wikiproject WikiBadge

And there's a page on MediaWiki:

• mw:OpenBadges

Just cross posting for now in the hopes of having some central forum. Tighe Flanagan (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

TFlanagan-WMF Hmm... I posted these and everything else I could find at Badges. I think that should be the central forum for discussion. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:43, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: Thanks! I didn't know that page existed, and it seems like a logical place to centralize the conversation. Apologies if I missed that earlier, but it wasn't on my radar. Tighe Flanagan (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

@TFlanagan-WMF: The extension has been worked on a little and was updated this summer. Ainali (talk) 06:47, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Gamification as a service

Hi, User:Danilo.mac and I are proposing a IEG project called Gamification as a service that I think have some common topics with this idea. I would like to invite the users engaged here to join our project's talks page and help us to improve our project with different community inputs. Crang115 (talk) 19:53, 27 April 2016 (UTC)