search

1EdTech / openbadges-discussion

A no-code repository for having discussions related to the general technical issues of openbadges.
10 stars 3 forks source link

Explore issuing badges to a non-human entity like an org or a book etc #9

Closed threeqube closed 7 years ago

threeqube commented 10 years ago

On multiple occasions it has been brought up whether a badge could be issued to an organization or non-human entity. Some examples are as follows:

The hack solution based on existing standard is to just issue the org or book a badge via an email but might be worthy of a deeper discussion to explore alternatives.

xmatthewx commented 10 years ago

Certification programs as well:

Greenpeace should really give a badge for decreasing carbon emissions and increasing admissions of bad behavior :smile:

threeqube commented 10 years ago

Greenpeace should really give a badge for decreasing carbon emissions and increasing admissions of bad behavior :smile:

Word. :book:

carlacasilli commented 10 years ago

The ecosystem would be very :smile_cat: if this happened.

iamjessklein commented 10 years ago

:+1: for the sake of conversation - it seems to make sense that you would be able to issue an org (an entity comprised of humans) as open badges are about the identity, however, I wonder if issuing a book a badge, falls into the territory of a prize. In that scenario, it seems like badging the author would be in line with our current thinking.

dpresant commented 10 years ago

New comment I have a real instance right now, where my volunteer board wants to recognize community organizations and companies who have demonstrated leadership in Recognition of Prior Learning (PLA/PLAR). We give them a paper certificate but want to also give them a badge (we're calling it a "seal") that they can put on their website that links back to their citation on our website. One catch with doing it as a badge is that the company would need to make their site display badges, as opposed to simply embedding a badge. In the short term, I think we're going to give them a png and a link.

(Copied from Google Group for Open Badges re Sunny Lee)

This has come up in local discussions, and I thought it made sense to toss out there for discussion.

Can/should a company or other organization earn a badge, based on demonstrated competencies? To what extent is this different from an individual earning a badge?

Does this derail the notion of Open Badges or extend it?

Here are some possible use cases:

  1. Educational institution is an "Adult Learner Friendly Institution" (ALFI - this actually exists), or some other criterion
  2. Small manufacturer achieves "brown belt" status in a lean manufacturing certification program, based on the number of indivuduals trained in lean, and/or an aggregation of badges of individuals in the company, and/or a summative evaluation of the company
  3. Non-profit organization is recognized for quality processes (project management, fiscal processes, expertise with particular client groups, etc.)
  4. Home improvement contractor is certified for customer satisfaction Company is a diverse employer, as evaluated by a third party

It's fun to explore the idea of companies as naturally psychotic (just Google "psychotic organization"), but might this become a way of appealing to enlightened self-interest of an organization? I'd be curious to hear what others think about this.

Has anyone else been talking about this? Are there current examples?

Don Presant Winnipeg, Canada

ottonomy commented 10 years ago

@dpresant: Sorry it took me a few days to get back to you. Sunday morning is deep-replying mode for me sometimes. I've been trying to think of the various ways to indicate an earner's identity in metadata, and how these might be applicable to non-individual identities, like the organizations you mentioned.

If an organization is big enough to have its own domain name (like exampleorganization.org), that would be a great identifier to target with a badge.

The IdentityHash method of obscuring the earner of the badge, but allowing verification of the claimed earner of a badge is a good method in many cases where personal email addresses are used (cuts down on spam, protects earners' identities from some undesired public knowledge). One question to answer as we evolve the standard is what extent to which this protection should be enabled for other types of identifier, especially of public organizations.

If you want to issue badges to these organizations this month, I'd say forge ahead! You may find that there is a "standard enough" email address that you could choose as an identifier. As a member of the BA standards working group, you could implement these badges in a way that will not be difficult for the earners to display, and over time you could upgrade various parts of the experience as badge consumers interact with you in the context of investigating the badges you've issued to these orgs. We'll need willing issuers and earners to try out badging for organizations.

You don't need to teach an earner how to make their site intelligently display badges. You can tell them that they can put the image up with a simple link to an evidence page (on your domain) where you take on that significant responsibility yourself. If the earner organizations want to go above-and-beyond, they could embed an iFrame of a Mozilla backpack collection containing the badge.

Eventually, I hope that there is a wide range of badge-aware applications that will act as a middleman between earners and consumers that will negotiate some aspects of badge validation (as a Service) and ensure that badges are as near to effortless for earners to implement as altering images and links in a friendly content management system like WordPress (with no badge plugins).

timothyfcook commented 7 years ago

You can now endorse badgeClasses which, in a way, is like endorsing the owner of that badgeClass.

You can now issue badgeAssertions to multiple identity types: https://github.com/openbadges/openbadges-specification/issues/77

Moving to archive.