User:Prawsthorne/Engagement

Community engagement

How to encourage community engagement within Mozilla's open badges initiative?

Background

Currently, Mozilla has a number of growing communities in relatively new areas. Traditionally, the Mozilla communities have grown around open source projects and those who utilized the software built by these projects. With the introduction of hackasaurus, webmaker, popcornmaker, open badges, kitchen table events, etc. Mozilla has added communities focused on learning webmaking and the use of digital badges. The addition of communities focused on learning, and the support of learning, the audience has changed from the technical to the pedagogical. This is not to say Mozilla as a whole has moved away from the technical, it's just saying that a new group has joined in. And this group is more focused on learning (or pedagogy) than focusing on the technical.

It should be noted that many of the activities described below are already occuring and the open badges group are already doing a good job of growing thier community.

Current community engagement tools

• github - source code, wiki with documentation, excellent for the technically oriented (maybe not the best place for the non-technical)
• google groups - great for discussion, has strong history as newsgroup platform, easily accessible for the non-technical
• etherpad - great collaborative space, especially for document creation, does very well during open calls
• google docs - documents are beginning to form in google docs that are community built to explain how to use, implement, issue, etc... open badges
• conferences - a number of events and conferences (DML 2012, other) have been discussing badges
• other (tbd) - there must be other community tools being used within this realm

Requirements

• support the learners/displayers
• support the issuers
• support the teachers
• support the technologists
• encourage communities for all the above
• provide stewardship for their collaboration in a meta-community (or hub)
• be dead-easy to use
• be flat and allow quick access to area of need and support
• provide reference materials (and samples) to ease understanding of the badges ecosystem
• other (there are more, these should provide the gist to describe this "project")

Hub and Spoke (or homebase and outposts)

A mozillian (or small group of mozillians) need to take ownership of an open badges hub. The build out of the hub should focus on the above users and colesce a launching pad for all the communities that have and will form around the use of open badges. The main theme being that Mozilla should grow a kick-ass awesome hub to promote and support the use of badges, they should also provide exemplary outreach services to all the spokes (or outposts) that may form, regardless of where they form.

Outstanding Stewardship

Most important is to provide outstanding stewardship of all the communites that form in and around open badges. This isn't just the communtity hub that draws people in, but also pushes them out to their areas of interest and need. One of the most interesting aspects of this community is the four different groups that require enagement. We need to support and assist all four of these groups, and each group is different. These include;

1. the learner/displayer - those who want badges, and are willing to put in the time to build skills and knowledge and engage in assessment
2. the issuers - institutions, independent / professional organizations and people (or supermentors) who want to issue badges
3. the teachers - those who want to issue badges to learners who show mastery of skills and knowledge
4. the technologists - who want to utilize, build and extend the badges technology and related infrastructure

Contribution

How this wiki page comes full circle; and where I believe my efforts could be best applied.

How would an individual, group, institution or Mozilla encourage community engagement within Mozilla's open badges initiative?

Badge Implementer(s)

They should become badge implementers, they should implement every corner of the OBI and be transparent and blog about it. Describe the issues they run across within their environment, institution, etc... They should add to the collective consciousness of open badges.

Individually

Start coding in PhP, HTML5, CSS & node.js against every corner of the OBI. Play the role of a newcomer to open badges and blog about everything. Explain how I learned things, what worked - what didn't, have fun... Contribute to any open documents that will begin to form around open badges. Become an open badges expert and evangelist. Heavily commit to the learner/displayer role.