[Using Sakai] Badges in Sakai/Profile2

[Steve Swinsburg]

Hi all,

I'm thinking about adding badges to Profile2, similar to the badges in foursquare, although it would be academically focused, things like 'I got my first A', '10 connections', or 'Wikimaster' for 100 wiki edits. It would integrate with many of the other tools in Sakai. 

You'd be able to see a list of badges you have unlocked, and there would be an info screen for each of your badge unlocks that also showed the date and qualifier for unlocking that badge, if appropriate. For example, if you unlocked the badge 'I got my first A', it would say something like "For assignment 'The History of Sakai' in XYZ class". This would be visible to the badge owner only.

You would also be able to see which of your connections also had unlocked the same badge, but not their qualifiers. Maybe this could be a privacy setting to control it's visibility so that you could also share this.

Profile2 already has the Kudos feature whereby you get a calculated score for using Profile2 lots, this would be an extension.

Chuck alerted me to a project that looks to standardise this (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges), but it may be a while off. Work would not be lost though, the implementation would be swappable for this other Badge project's API. Referring to the diagram about halfway down that page, Sakai would become a badge issuer, Profile2 would display the badge backpack. Then badges from other systems would be visible in Sakai as well.

What do you think?

If this is a goer, would anyone with some graphical design skills be interested in creating some badges?

I'm also interested in what badges we should have. Get back to me with any ideas!

cheers,
Steve