The first Open edX-based badges or micro-credentials are being issued this weekend by George Washington University's MOOC "Practical Numerical Methods with Python", run by the innovative Professor Lorena Barba. IBL Studios Education developed an XBlock and created the  layouts of the badges. These six badges –hosted at Achievery.com– recognize the efforts of GW Online's students. This development was introduced at Harvard on November 19th during the Open edX conference. Here is the video. See the process of a student claiming a badge on the Open edX platform below. Update:
President Obama announced last week that edX has joined ConnectED, the White House's initiative to empower teachers to embrace technology and digital learning. As part of this program, edX partner universities and colleges will offer professional development courses for teachers, along with courses to prepare students for AP exams. Courses for teachers include training on using technology in the classroom, learning theory and leadership, along with teaching in a blended format. Teachers will be able to earn verified certificates upon successful course completions. Students in high-need and in rural schools around the country will be able to earn free verified certificates in any of the more than 40 courses and modules edX university partners are developing as preparation for the AP exams. All courses, developed by the nation's best colleges and universities, will be open for registration on edx.org within the next 12 months. EdX partners participating in the ConnectED initiative include: Teacher Professional Development: Boston University Davidson College Georgetown University Harvard University MIT Rice University Teachers College, Columbia University University of Texas Arlington University of Texas Austin University of Texas System Courses to Prepare for AP Exams: Boston University Cooper Union Davidson College Georgetown University MIT Tennessee Board of Regents Rice University UC Berkeley Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
An innovative Open edX extension that integrates digital badges into MOOCs will be presented this Wednesday on Harvard University's campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the first Open edX conference. It will be an XBlock developed by IBL Studios Education and George Washington University (GWU), with the support of University of Indiana, edX and Achievery.com. GWU's Professor Lorena Barba, who provided a conceptual design and iterative refinements for this app, has prepared a set of slides explaining the development. The badge solution will work initially with the Achievery.com badge hosting service. This Rhode Island-based company has developed an API that IBL's engineering team has integrated into a Python client and connected to the Open edX platform. The first institution to integrate this solution will be George Washington University through its Open edX platform. Students of the "Practical Numerical Methods with Python" course will be the first ones benefiting from the IBL Open Badge XBlock. Their achievements will be recognized through badges that will be automatically issued when their grading scores on each lesson surpass 50 percent or any other percentage set by the instructor.
Around 70 % of the upcoming courses have this option enabled. "Verified Certificate" is becoming the only option for acknowledgement of course completion, despite protests by many students. At present Coursera is receiving more than $1 million per month in revenues from verified certificates. (edSurge recently wrote an interesting report titled How Does Coursera Make Money)
The edX Engineering blog features George Washington University's Professor Lorena A. Barba, who has developed the second independent, non-edX Consortium Open edX university instance (after Stanford’s). The interview is a must-read. As Open edX consultants, at IBL we are asked many times how it is possible to create engaging learning sequences. I advise to take Lorena’s Numerical Methods with Python’s MOOC in order to get a glimpse. See what her secret recipe is. (Disclosure: IBL Studios Education is providing professional services and technical support at GW Online) "As course instructor and designer at the same time, my focus has been creating a map, a guided tour for the course participants to navigate the course content and learning pathways. The core content, itself, resides outside the Open edX platform, in fact—it’s on GitHub. We also use the Open edX discussion forum and graded assignments, so the platform is more for providing interaction than content. My focus is learning together. I am learning as intensely as the top participants in the course. We use Open edX as an object of connection". (Disclosure: IBL Studios Education is providing professional services and technical support at GW Online)
