Badges Design Principles Database Project: Update on New Principles

by Daniel Hickey

This post is cross-posted at HASTAC. 

This post is a brief update about the design principles that have emerged in our analyses and interviews of the 30 DML badges awardees. We will begin posting the initial set of design principles for using digital badges to support learning. Specifically we will put up consecutive posts about the principles we have found for using digital badges to recognize, assess, motivate, and research learning. The first blog on recognizing learning with digital badges is up at HASTAC and Remediating Assessment. The second blog on assessing learning is posted at HASTAC and Remediating Assessment.

Online Open Courses Raise Eleven Issues for Higher Education

by Daniel Hickey

            I introduce eleven issues that I am going to have to address with my university in order to teach a free open online course on educational assessment.  I then explore the first issue, Intellectual Property, and how that issue intersects with instructional innovation in open courses.

Digital Badges Meeting at the NSF Headquarters Hosted by NYSCI

by Katerina Schenke

This post describes a meeting at the National Science Foundation where sixty leaders in education and research from around the country gathered to discuss digital badges and education.  Three of use presented the initial set of design principles from the Design Principles Documentation Project.

Google Funds an Assessment Practices, Policies and Principles BOOC

by Dan Hickey

This post describe the Big Open Online Course on assessment that was recently funded by Google.

Initial Explorations in Digital Badges and Motivation

By Cathy Tran

This post introduces two of the newest members of the badges Design Principles Documentation Project and describes our efforts to examine the motivational practices and principles that we are uncovering across the 30 project funded to develop digital badges by the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning initiative

Introducing Digital Badges Within and Around Universities

Dan Hickey

Sheryl Grant from HASTAC recently posted a detailed summary of resources about uses of digital badges in higher education.^[1] It was a very timely post for me as I had been asked to draft just such a brief by an administrator at Indiana University where I work.  Sheryl is the director of social networking for the MacArthur/Gates Badges for Lifelong Learning initiative.  Her job leaves her uniquely knowledgeable about the explosive growth of digital badges in many settings, including colleges and universities.  In this post, I want to explore one of the issues that Sheryl raised about the ways badges are being introduced in higher education, particularly as it relates to Indiana’s Universities.

Initial Questions About Digital Badges and Learning

by Daniel Hickey

This post suggests some initial questions about learning that you might want to ask if you are considering using digital badges.  A version of this post is being prepared for the November 2012 edition of EvoLLLution magazine.  That article will consider how digital badges can be used to both enhance learning and recognize learning in ways that might help colleges and universities attract larger numbers of adult learners back to school.  This post poses these same questions in a more general context.