Badges
An approach to alternative credentials, badges, are digital tokens that appear as icons or logos on a web page or other online venue. Awarded by institutions, organizations, groups, or individuals, badges signify accomplishments such as completion of a project, mastery of a skill, or marks of experience. Learners fulfill the issuer-specific criteria to earn the badge by attending classes, passing an exam or review, or completing other activities, and a grantor verifies that the specifications have been met and awards the badge. Numerous groups, organizations, community projects, and web entities currently issue badges, and they are gaining currency in higher education as well.
Opportunity Statement
Although many details remain for badges to be broadly accepted, they represent a different approach to credentials, one that places the focus on individual students and their learning accomplishments.
Prediction Source(s)
Posted in: Emerging Markets Poll
kstackhouse 6:05 pm on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I;m not sure I want a Badge from a random website because I visited X times or made a certain amount of purchases. I do see the motivational value when associated with students. Everyone likes a sticker when they have worked hard, a digital one is just as good.
cunnian 8:20 pm on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I’ve seen badges used in Edmodo… both students and instructors can earn them but I suspect that their impact on learning is superficial at best. It seems to be a digital token economy that might be an effective motivator for some students but likely not all most of them.
teacherben 10:57 pm on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
One approach that I have been looking at is that teachers can offer opportunities for students to present learning in more ways, provided the kids has demonstrated some initiative and competency already in that medium. For example, a teacher that usually gets kids to write an essay on a subject, could introduce video instead, but that may not be for everyone and it could take weeks to get all the kids skilled up. But instead, the teacher could say, if you already have at least your level 1 video-editing badge, then this is an option for you. That way, the kids may be inspired to take the time on their own to learn this stuff.
I am just getting started with this at my school but I am hoping to use this sort of a model to kickstart.
Kent Jamieson 10:44 am on September 7, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good call, these seem quite ‘superficial’; however, it’s always nice to have instant feedback.
teacherben 10:53 pm on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Good timing! My elementary school counterpart and I just spent the last 2 weeks designing and constructing a badge program at our school. We spent a lot of time constructing appropriate tasks and organizing learning materials. This is based around a growing list of skills that teachers seem to expect from kids and yet aren’t being taught–at least not to everyone. We are a 1 to 1 laptop school, so tech features quite heavily into everyone’s classes and yet there are a lot of kids that don’t know the first thing about creating a video or cropping a photo. We use ePortfolios and you keep getting kids putting HD videos and 40MB photos onto their web pages and are surprised when the page takes forever to load. So we have started with image editing, video editing, typing and search. We looked into a few products for setting up such a system. mozilla has a good thing going with OpenBadges, but there is a lot of server-side stuff that is a struggle to get access to so we are just relying on the honour system and emailing kids their badges. Thre is a company called ‘BadgeStack’ that runs an implementation of OpenBadges on their server (or yours, if you like) and they do a lot of the grunt work in setting it up for you. I emailed them the other day and got a response in seconds–eager beavers. It will be interesting to see how a company can turn this into a money-maker.
tomwhyte1 8:01 pm on September 7, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
As a middle years teacher, and as an adult, this basic behaviorist technic may seem outdated, or at times childish, but the simple fact is – it works. Why else would “Angry Birds” have 1 – 2 – 3 star rating system per level. Everyone wants three stars, why? Simply because it is more, a way to identify superiority. This is a technic that has been recently employed into the Khan Academy, and almost every game or game-based learning tool invented.
Therefore, should this be ignored because it is not cutting edge? Based upon that rationale we should never use a pencil or paper again, but luckily we do, because they, like badges, are a solid technology that has consistently proven itself through time.
Thoughts?
jameschen 10:15 pm on September 7, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think it comes down to the extrinsic vs intrinsic motivational factors in education. Whichever is more suitable for the learner would be dependent on the learning style of the individual learner.
teacherben 11:00 pm on September 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Either way, it has a good chance to be successful. Some kids want the badge. Some kids want whatever their friends have. Still others will see the value in learning the skill and the badge might not mean much to them but it won’t hurt.
jameschen 10:03 am on September 10, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Agreed. It would be interesting to have the students design their own badges too.
visramn 4:59 pm on September 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think this system would be beneficial for some and not for others. Some people would discredit this form of acknowledgement where as others may be motivated to try harder to achieve this token of appreciation. It is all based on context and the individuals involved.
Nureen
tomwhyte1 8:02 pm on September 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Are you thinking of all learners, K-12, or simply adult?
visramn 11:44 pm on September 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I think this is the case with all age groups. Incentives can work with individuals of all ages if they buy into them.
C. Ranson 7:08 am on September 9, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I have just read through the posts about “Badges”, there seems to be some merit in using them in K-12 and their success or value seems to be related to how they are utilized in a program. Younge people are always looking for recognition for their successes. For adult learners if they were recognized similiar to credentialingof some sort and taken seriously they could be useful.
longworth 10:42 am on September 10, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I guess I’m a sucker for gold stars because I love this idea. (Maybe because both my parents were teachers) I personally need a bit of credit for my work.
I do agree that there is definitely merit to this type of system. I also think it works well for the type of person who isn’t generally vocal about their accomplishments. The badges can make concrete just how much one has accomplished. It’s always helpful to have goals to set and I think this system can help students map their way to their goals by meriting smaller accomplishments along the way (so the end doesn’t appear so distant).
teacherben 5:59 pm on September 10, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Since I am currently trying to get such a program off the ground at my school, this is an area of personal interest to me.