Last week, we ran a thinkathon for the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) in Dublin, Ireland. They’re interested in potentially using Open Badges for the ‘Junior Cycle’, as well as short courses that schools are going to be able to offer.

It’s early days in that project, which is why we spent all morning doing an activity that we call ‘defining the cast’. Just as in a theatrical performance, these are the main players to focus your attention upon.

The process we go through is a lightweight version of the kind of thing you’d do in product design around user personas or identifying ‘jobs to be done’. It forces you to stand in the shoes of someone else, and ask what their context is, including their problems, hopes, fears, and dreams.

In this case, we encouraged the thinkathon participants to step into the shoes of students, parents, and educators. It was an enlightening process, as it always is.

CC BY-ND Fred Boss

From there, we spent the afternoon ensuring we were on the same page in terms of what badges actually are through a short presentation and Q&A. We used a simple collaborative activity (that worked well at the Mozilla Festival) to design badges that spoke into the context of the ‘cast’ we defined.

One of the huge benefits of the thinkathons we run being so visual (thanks, Bryan!) is that when we wrap-up the work, it’s much easier to remember the thinking that accompanied each image. It also means that the NCCA can go back and use this ‘cast’ to help them think through work in the future!

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