A handbook,
not a course-site clone.
This page is the orientation. Five steps, five minutes — what to read in what order, where the design tools live, how to take notes you can actually keep, and what the credential proves about you when you finish.
Read in this order.
The handbook is a four-part document.
If you have one hour: Open the full handbook and read Part 1 (Foundations) + Part 4 (Assessment & operations) first. Then sample Part 3 sessions in order, and treat Part 2 as reference.
If you have 12 weeks: open Session 01 and walk forward. Each session ends with a deliverable scaffold; the deliverable rubrics live on rubrics.
Five deliverables. One pass bar.
What you'll ship to earn the credential.
- D1 · Design Problem Statement — Session 02
- D2 · Objective × Mechanic Crosswalk — Session 03
- D3 · Paper Prototype + Facilitator Guide — Session 07
- D4 · Playtest Report — Session 09
- D5 · Implementation Spec — Session 12
The rubric is non-compensatory: a 9 in four rows cannot rescue a 2 in the fifth. Each deliverable has its own row of criteria; each criterion has its own pass bar.
Take notes that survive the semester.
Highlight, note, export.
Select any text on any page. The toolbar that pops up has two buttons: 🖍 Highlight (marks the text) and 📝 Note (highlight + slide-in drawer to write a comment). Click an existing highlight to edit or remove its note.
Hit the Notes (N) badge in the top utility bar — it shows everything you've highlighted on the current page, with three download options (this page, all pages, JSON export).
Find anything fast.
Search box at the top of every page.
It indexes every public page (titles, headings, body, figure captions). Type 2+ characters; ↑↓ to navigate; Enter to open; Esc to close. The score weighting prioritizes title and heading hits.
Other navigation:
- Top nav — Course / Resources / Credential / Instructor groups
- Spot the Loop on the homepage — a 3-question warm-up pulled from a 12-item bank, 7-day cooldown
- Back-to-top button bottom-left on long pages
- Reading-time pill next to the eyebrow on long pages
What the credential proves.
Open Badges 3.0 + Verifiable Credential.
When all five deliverables clear the rubric, you get a cryptographically signed credential — issuer is The University of Alabama, signing key is published. Anyone with the badge JSON can verify it independently via verifier.html.
The credential page itself is at credential.html; it lists what the badge claims, the alignment to UDL/ISTE/CSTA standards, the issuance pipeline, and the public funding acknowledgment.