Science Scouts using user_badges in Drupal

I first saw Science Scouts a couple of years ago. At first, I thought the badges were just silly, but after I'd thought about it a little, I realized they had real potential to help students see faculty from a different perspective. I think students often have a hard time understanding what faculty do and that the badges could humanize faculty -- and help students appreciate their accomplishments. Especially the badges about publication, funding, etc. And they could show that faculty can have a sense of humor too -- something students are all too frequently in doubt about.

There is a module in Drupal called user_badges that allows people to associate badges with their user account. Today, I installed it at the Biology development website, configured it to use the Science Scouts badges, and modified the template for the Faculty page so faculty who want to show Science Scout badges could easily do so. I've set up my page on the Biology development site to show my badges. It's just on the development site, but I could easily migrate it to the production site.

The badges are at the bottom of the page -- mouse over them to see the titles. If you click on a badge, it will take you to the appropriate Science Scouts page.

It was easy to do. I had to make a handful of changes to the user_badges module to make it work: I had to increase the size of the name field in the database, because some of the badges have absurdly long names. I also decided to double the width of the field where you select user badges -- it seemed too small before. I also resized the graphics so that a bunch more badges can fit on a single row (although it looks fine to have them wrap.) If anyone wants my modified user_badges code and the file to import all the badges, I'm happy to provide it.

I've sent a note to the chair. I'm not sure if faculty will be willing to have this available on the actual Biology Department website. I think it's cool and it would be great to have it available for those who are willing. Not everyone will want to do it, but it would be neat to have it there.

We could also make them available to grad students too.