Collections

Our deliverable will consist of a curated set of digital badges focused exclusively on learning tech skills coupled with an organizational system that will allow our users to create portable collections of those badges based on their needs. For our initial roll-out, only badges that will help women technologists hone their skills in web development or data visualization will be collected. If additional funding is acquired at a later date, our flexible system can easily accommodate more badges tied to more skill-sets.

Web development was chosen as a featured skill-set due to the presence of multiple ongoing initiatives to train and ultimately hire women web developers in our target age range. Such initiatives include a partnership between online vintage merchandiser Etsy and Hacker School in New York City (Overholt, 2013), and Hackbright Academy in San Francisco who has partnered with Facebook and SurveyMonkey. While their efforts are laudable, they are also expensive, highly selective, and require relocation to New York or San Francisco. Our curated set of web development digital badges can be earned by anyone, anywhere, and at minimal (and often no) cost; the Mozilla Webmaker badges are a perfect example of this and offer an excellent spring pad for our collection. Our other featured skillset, data visualization, was chosen due its status as an emerging field, and also because women, such as Hilary Mason at bit.ly, are already mentors and leaders in this field. Our initial data visualization collection offers badges that can be earned free of charge via Indiana University’s Information Visualization MOOC.

Digital badges offer much promise, but they are currently sorely lacking in discoverability. To aid in discoverability, users are encouraged to tag badges in our collection using their own preferred terms. In addition, we offer an innovative visual way to explore our collection via “badge maps” similar to those created by Treehouse. Our badge maps incorporate the concept of “leveling up,” as they are grouped by level from 1 (beginner) to 5 (expert) (see data visualization example below). Our level-based approach lowers barriers to entry by allowing women to build confidence at the beginner level and gradually move through more advanced levels of skill at their own pace, serving as an “encouragement mechanism” crucial for women’s persistence in tech (Brett & Rayman, 1995).
data_visualization_badge_map
Individual badges are represented by the different colored hexagons above and they “light up” when hovered over by the user. When the user clicks on a badge in the badge map, a pop-up window will display the complete set of curated BadgeCore metadata for that badge.

Another innovative part of our badge map interface is the presence of employer created badge maps. Employers start with our skill-set templates and simply drag and drop their preferred badges onto the map to create their own customized badge maps in a particular skill area. Our users can then browse employer-specific badge maps using a pick list, allowing women a way to tailor their badge collection to compliment interests of particular companies, thus increasing their hireability. If a user creates a profile on our site, they can be matched with employers through a simple employer-only interface that ranks user hireability based on percent match with employer-created badge maps. Etsy found that “hacking their recruiting methods” was the key to success in hiring more women coders (Overholt, 2013, para. 16), and our employer-specific badge maps are firmly rooted within that approach.

Brett, B., & Rayman, P. (1995). Women science majors: What makes a difference in persistence after graduation? Journal of Higher Education, 66, 388-414. Retrieved July 26, 2013 from http://www.jstor.org.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/stable/2943794

Overholt, A. (2013). Wanted: More women coders at etsy. Retrieved July 26, 2013 from http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/02/19/etsy-women-coders

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