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.
