Saturday, April 06, 2013

A badge system design rubric

With the amazing assistance and feedback from others I have created a badge system design rubric. The purpose of this rubric is to guide people toward creating a good badge system. The rubric is not meant to evaluate existing badge systems, but to prompt thinking about what is a good badge system design. The goal is for people to create effective and well thought-out badge systems.

A pdf file of the badge system design rubric is available with this link.

The rubric has four levels of performance and nine criteria. The levels of performance are as follows;
  1. Introductory - this is meant as just the basics of a badge system. the badge system implements just what is needed to provide a basic / introductory badge system. The level of knowledge to create an introductory badge system is a minimum.
  2. Working - this is meant to be a working badge system. It implements everything of the introductory with the addition of a more thorough set of dimensions and integration with other learning and credentialing systems. A working badge system is a complete badge system.
  3. Notable - this is meant to be a badge system of note, it should be referred to as a good working system with additional features that should be considered when developing badge systems. It implements everything of the working system with the addition of being recognized (and utilized) by other learning and credentialing systems within the same subject domain.
  4. Exemplary - the exemplary badge system is a badge system that most others aspire to be. The exemplary badge system becomes the defacto standard for accrediting a subject domain.
for greater understanding of each level of performance for the badge systems, read each level as a column. Given the depth of detail for the criteria I will be dedicating a blog post to each criteria explaining my thinking, references and rationale. Remember, the badge system design rubric is to guide the development of a badge system not evaluate existing badge systems.