Earlier this year, We Are Open Co-op teamed up with MyKnowledgeMap to create Badge Bootcamp. We had identified a need to get people up-to-speed quickly with what Open Badges are, and how to go about creating your first one.

What we created

We wanted something fun and engaging, as there are so many boring, corporate ways of doing credentials. We also wanted something that provided information on-demand, and allowed individuals to receive a badge in recognition of creating their first one. For this reason, experimented with a self-paced email course. The idea was that the person signing-up should be able to go through it as quickly as they want to.

As we’re a big fan of animated gifs, they featured heavily in the emails that users received. We settled on sending five emails, as we imagined someone completing the course over a week’s lunch breaks. The screenshot below doesn’t show the animation in the gif, but gives a flavour of what users received.

Each email provided what we hoped was just enough information to complete a short activity, before they clicked on the button to receive the next email.

As the whole thing was automated, we had no way of checking whether the individual had in fact completed the activity. But that wasn’t the point.

How we did it

Using MyKnowledgeMap’s OpenBadges.me badge issuing platform and their BadgeUp badge display site as examples, we created a mini email-based course where people signing-up were walked through what we consider to be ‘badge basics’.

Once they signed up, the workflow was automatic using MailChimp’s automation tools. As soon as an individual clicked a button to say they were ready for the next email, it arrived in their inbox within minutes.

This workflow was inspired by an article from a few years ago about creating a self-paced email course. We had to create specific pages on our website to trigger the next email. You can see the code behind the specific section of our website for Badge Bootcamp here.

The only manual part of the process was the badge issuing itself. One of us had to go into the MailChimp dashboard on a regular basis, and copy/paste the details of those who had finished the course into OpenBadges.me.

Were we successful?

MyKnowledgeMap kindly sponsored Badge Bootcamp until the end of June 2017. In the last four months, here are the stats:

  • 214 sign-ups
  • 41 completions and badge awards (19.16%)
  • 2 unsubscribed (0.94%)

For those interested in technical details:

  • 77.8% desktop (47.9% GMail / 13.8% Apple Mail)
  • 22.2% mobile (19.2% iPhone)

In terms of location:

  • 44.9% USA
  • 15% UK

We’re planning to bring back Badge Bootcamp later this year, once we’ve made some changes. If you’d like to sponsor it, or help us make it better, please get in touch! Email: badgebootcamp@weareopen.coop


We Are Open Co-op works to spread the culture, processes, and benefits of openness wherever we can.