The
notion of “badges” in education has come a long way since they were first
pinned onto boy scouts. Pushing the recognition of learning and accomplishment into
a web enabled environment are digital badges, which are virtual tokens that can
contain detailed evidence of practical educational accomplishments. The idea of
a digital badge is no longer unknown, especially amongst those engaged in
educational research and digital technology.
Spurred on by major support from the MacArthur Foundation and the
leadership of Mozilla, moving badges from an interesting idea to widely
recognized and valued credential now calls for intense attention.
Most
people find it hard to disagree with the benefits of web-enabled credentials,
particularly in the light of increasing socio-political debates surrounding the
efficacy of public schooling in the United States. The notion of creating an
interconnected, learning ecosystem that leaning based on student interests is
almost always welcomed. After all, it’s all about the children, right? But the
thought of renouncing established norms and codes in education and professions
and parting with the restrictive yet widely accepted grading and assessment
system has as lot of people wondering. Therein lies the biggest hurdle that challenges
introducing new modes of assessing learning and identifying knowledge in
students. Yet through deep theoretical
investigation and persistent practice, weaving badges into educational curriculum
has proven to be stimulating with certain organizations seeing applauded
success.
Research in Practice:
Research
and experimentation centered on digital badges in learning become pivotal in
bridging the gulf between warm, fuzzy thoughts on bettering the quality of
learning in schools and the harsh grade-based reality that the rigidity of
formal educational norms has established.
MacArthur’s
Digital Media and Learning (DML) initiative is the primary force in this new initiative,
in close. In partnership with technological gurus at Mozilla and educational
researchers at HASTAC. In 2012, DML’s
Badges for Lifelong Learning Initiative funded thirty organizations that mixed
badges into the folds of social entrepreneurship, education, technology and innovation.
Documenting the evolution of the thirty projects can provide seminal literature
going forward in the implantation of badges and the responsibility of
collecting, investigating and sharing the new knowledge that these project
generate is the responsibility of a team lead by Daniel Hickey, an Associate Professor
and Director at Indiana University’s, School of Education. Funded by MacArthur, Hickey’s
efforts through the Design Principles Documentation Project (DPD) are seeking
to compile a web-accessible database of the principles, practices, and
resources for using digital badges to
recognize, assess, motivate, and study learning.
One exemplar
that Hickey’s team have identified for such research in practice is the work
coming out of DigitalMe, a U.K. based association dedicated to building an
educational network of interconnected schools and professional or social
organizations. Lucy Neale, Projects Director at DigitalMe, oversees the
implementation of several project which involve their open badging system that
is free, web accessible and easy to share with other organizations or schools.
“The aim is to create an ecosystem of badges … where there’s lots of different choice for young people, because we found through our program, one of the main drivers and motivators for young people was that they could earn badges in things that they were interested in,” said Neale.
From Road Blocks to Building
Blocks:
The
work emerging from DigitalMe and MakeWaves is refreshing proof that badges are
indeed educational and prompt higher motivation and participation, especially
amongst younger students. With a network of over 4500 schools, 75000 students
and 9000 teachers, badges in the UK are gaining national approval and interest.
However, the newness of digital badges threw up a few hurdles that could be
typical yet informational at this stage of the developmental life cycle of
badges in practice. In highlighting some of the challenges that the team at
MakeWaves and DigitalMe ran into, other organizations might have a sense of
what to expect while badging and think about effective work-arounds.
Value and
Recognition:
Perhaps the most frequently asked question with respect to
the implementation of badges in schools or colleges today is tied closely to
the professional worth attached to each badge. “The value thing is the key bit
that everyone keeps coming back to,” said Cliff Manning, Communications
Director at MakeWaves. “On Makewaves we’ve seen the value for the younger
students is more internal, based within the school, getting recognized by a
teacher has proven to be most sought after and is a good motivator. However, as
students get older, employability is also key to this badge earning process
which is the challenge that we face.”
While
it is natural that any new mode of assessment and learning face some scrutiny,
badge enthusiasts across the blogosphere are confident that badges will play a
central role in the advancement of education.
Until the tide turns though,
introducing badges in schools and colleges successfully relies on the external
recognition the open badge system can provide amongst professional
organizations. “It is an ongoing challenge and it’s a bit of a vicious cycle in
a way, in that the often times the partners we’ve spoken to, media
organizations as an example would be ideal to endorse the badges but they want
to see people going through the programs and earning the badges before they
would endorse it but similarly schools want the endorsement piece in be in
place before they give out badges,” said Neale.
What’s
come out of their efforts this past year is an observation that badges are more
pervasive in benefiting local communities rather than national or international
networks. “As a good example, one college in Scotland proved that the local
impact of the open badges system was far more effective and revealed greater
motivation and community building than the national or international efforts, “
said Neale of increased community based involvement and motivation. Additionally,
by marrying education in the classroom with practical performance, badge based
learning has received support from reputed third party organizations like the
United Nations, Sarah and Gordon Brown with the UN Envoy for Education, the
Princess Trust and World Wildlife Federation. Stemming from the warm reception
that S2R received at the nationally acclaimed sporting venues like the Oval
Cricket Grounds and Arsenal Football Club, DigitalMe and MakeWaves have seen
how building recognition for badges is a challenging yet viable prospect. Furthermore, their initial work has inspired
the conception of a national badging advent titled, ‘Badge the UK’ which draws
from developing DML research and aims at increasing organizational association of badges in education.
Evidential Content in Badges:
Another
challenge that badges in education face is a concrete agreement of what
evidence badges must contain in order to be effective and attractive. Badges
are now mostly being used to compliment current assessment standards. In order to work their way up to being
credible and universally comprehendible, they must be consistent and
structured. While efforts from Mozilla have created the technology for anyone
to exchange and access open badges, the work at MakeWaves especially through
S2R, has highlighted the need for transparency and structure surrounding the
badge earning and credentialing process.
“Quite
early on we realized that the S2R framework is quite complex. Badge missions are
a way to address that. The idea is that it provides more structure and
framework around the badge so that you can take a badge but also that you can
see the steps that students have done en route to achieving that badge and you
can see the evidence along the way,” said Manning.
Badge
Missions and Badge Canvases were concepts introduced at MakeWaves to ensure
that teachers and administrators were putting serious thought into their badges
in order to ensure specificity and effectiveness of the badge issued. By
mapping out an informal flowchart of the purpose, the assessment criteria and even
the visual design of the badge, teachers and experts administering the badges
have a reliable implementation plan in place that can be polished to perfection
after introducing them. Equally important to the students earning these badges,
the badge missions allow the badge earners to map their learning curve along a
progress bar that the teacher can monitor through a dashboard. This
transparency has been crucial in not only ensuring consistency in the way each
level of the badge (for instance, gold, silver and bronze) is awarded but can
also motivate the earners to earn all the levels of a particular badge while
honing advantageous skills.
Lop-sided demand and supply:
While
the research emerging from DML and DPD is quick to reveal the excitement associated
with earning badges, the increase in demand for more badges quicker cannot
always be received correspondingly. The hierarchical nature of badge issuance
requires increased expert moderation when it comes time to award higher level
badges and teachers and experts are required to invest extra time in grading
and assessing higher level submissions. Tying into the lack of recognition
currently associated with digital badges, experts and teachers are struggling
to depart from formal educational standards in order to sanction these new
assessment tokens which do not guarantee employability just yet. Also fueling
this badge related teacher-student discrepancy is the intentional design to
keep higher level badges scarce to heighten value which can disrupt the
equilibrium that is designed to motivate students.
While
building recognition associated with various badges is a gradual process, what
is proving to increase teacher participation is a less prescriptive model as
badges gain traction. After investing more than a year in designing models for
schools and organizations to use directly off their website, DigitalMe is
looking to allow teachers, students and administrators a chance to design
learning plans specific to their necessities. “What we’re hoping to do now that we’ve
received some more UK based funding to do now, is actually enable more
organizations to go through that process,
supported by ourselves so that it becomes less about us creating our own
programs and about us enabling other organizations to create their badges
related to their own learning programs, “ said Neale.
With
the challenges of badging in education being persistently tackled through
research and funding, this is proving to be the time for those in learning;
research or practice to plan to incorporate badges as a compliment or the
centerpiece of their curriculum. After all, the practical application of the
badges is proving to be useful to building positive student centric communities,
rethinking assessment and propelling motivation in the classroom, all of which
are beneficial to bettering education in the digital age.
Roshni Verghese
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