New Collaboration with Badge List

by James Willis and Daniel Hickey

In our continuing efforts to help facilitate open digital badges in higher education, we are looking forward to expanding our set of collaborators to include Badge List. We met with Benjamin Roome, one of the co-founders, to establish how we might coordinate our efforts.  Our initial goal is working towards an API to integrate with the learning management system, Canvas, in time for courses this summer

Badge List emphasizes the importance of evidence tracking. Looking for a way to easily build and issue evidence-based open badges, Roome says,

Benjamin Roome

"Badge List is a software built on the idea that the meaning of an Open Badge is the evidence provided to earn it. We believe that learning communities deserve a badge issuing system that is easy to use and enables diverse forms of measurement. We have built a tool that allows educators and students to collaborate in learning experiences that maximize engagement within their communities."

The homepage of Badge List requires a participant to create an account with an email address and password. Once inside the site, the interface is easy to navigate.

 The tutorial is helpful to explain badges and how they operate within Badge List. Badge List can export to Mozilla Backpack because they are OBI-compliant.

So far, Badge List has partnered primarily with conference organizers to offer badges; for example, some teaching conferences benefit from having badge groups associated with professional development. They are paying particular attention to including more detailed and more specific information in those badges rather than merely replicating typical certificates of attendance.

Canvas has a number of badge providers that connect through their external LTI. Badge List is in the process of building their API to integrate with Canvas. Our collaboration will help expedite this process for two courses this summer. Dan will be offering a a big open online course (BOOC), Introduction to Educational Sciences in summer 2014.  Participants will be able to earn evidence-rich digital badge for completing part or all of the course.  If they wish, students will also be able to enroll in a for-credit section where they can earn three credits towards a graduate degree or towards IU's four course Learning Sciences, Media, and Technology certificate.


We look forward to this collaboration!