On Oct 20th 2014 I will be launching a Virtual Learning Center (VLC) at the University of Portland. I came up with the idea and initial concept for the VLC as part of my graduate work at Western Oregon University. Plug for the program here: MSEd | Information Technology.
I built the prototype on my personal WordPress site and it is now moved into a production system at UP.
The VLC is delivered on WordPress using the Learn Dash plugin. http://www.learndash.com/. This plugin allows your WordPress site to be a light weight Learning Management System. You can create courses and lessons that are perfect for self-paced learning. My team at UP has been busy creating courses. I will be adding my courses as well as hosting webinars and workshops.
One part of the VLC is the idea of achievements. To provide evidence to the learner that they completed the courses. To accomplish this I decided to impliment digital badging and with with the badging authority Credly.com. When looking for a badging authority I noticed that EDUCAUSE was using Credly. What I needed next was a way to connect Credly to the VLC (LearnDash). So the next plugin used is the BadgeOS plugin. http://badgeos.org/. This plugin provides a connection to Credly and LearnDash. This plugins help to get the achievements from the VLC to Credly.com.
To support the use of badging I needed to focus on the branding of the badges. Below are examples of badges created for the project. All are created in Photoshop. The idea is to keep them simple, colorful and fun. I’m using the colors outlined in the University of Portland Marketing Brand Guide. The graphics are the six sided hexagon shape. The idea is that if all put together they would create a honeycomb effect.
Examples of the graphic are below
