A Situative "Roadmap" for Synergy in Motivating Family STEM Engagement

By Dan Hickey

This is the third post about my collaboration with Iridescent Inc., a science education non-profit in LA. This new post describes how a key assumption in newer "situative" theories of motivation can resolve the tensions between prior empiricist and constructivist approaches. When combined with Design Based Research methods, this assumption can result in a coherent "roadmap" towards synergy across the three approaches. I contend that such a roadmap can help Iridescent and other informal STEM innovators find a route that takes them from current levels of engagement to much higher levels of engagement, both in terms of quantity and quality.

This post could use some work and some trimming but I need to get it up for my class and colleagues and get on to other things. Will try to clean it up soon

Motivating STEM Engagement in Children, Families, and Communities

By Daniel Hickey

 This extended post is the second in a series of post about my work with non-profit STEM education start up called Iridescent.  In a previous post I describe their Curiosity Machine and an evaluation I carried out of a program designed to encourage families to complete Engineering Design Challenges on that website from home, after attending two-hour weekly evening workshops. In this post I explore the challenges that organizations like Iridescent and science museums face in attempting to motivate inquiry learning in informal contexts. I am also using this post as my weekly contribution to the graduate education class on motivation that I am currently teaching.

Engaging Children and Families in Informal Science Learning

By Dan Hickey 

In this post, I share some things I have learned about the design of "semi-formal" science learning environments that I learned working with a remarkable science education non-profit in Los Angeles called Iridescent.

A Few Recent Badges Publications

by James Willis 

It's wonderful to see open digital badges research expanding rapidly. We have a brief list (with links) of recent papers that might be of interest to those studying badges. This is one effort our new project, Open Badges in Higher Education.

Open Digital Badges: Recognizing, Assessing, and Motivating Learning in the DPD Project

by Katerina Schenke, James Willis, and Dan Hickey

As the Design Principles Documentation team analyzes the project data from 30 digital badge projects awarded funding in the 2012 DML 4: Badges for Lifelong Learning Completition, certain principles and practices emerge as being successful or overly challenging. This post highlights the three most successful and challenging principles and practices in recognition, assessment, and motivation. 

Of Course Alfie Kohn Dislikes Open Digital Badges: Transcending a 40-Year Old Debate

By Daniel Hickey

Serge Ravet just posted the recordings of Alfie Kohn’s virtual keynote address at the July 2014 e-Portfolio, Open Badges, and Identity Conference (EPIC), along with my response and some audience Q & A. Not surprisingly, Alfie had many concerns with digital badges being used as "extrinsic rewards." This post provides some background on this this crucial issue for the growing open badges movement.  I conclude with eight arguments against Alfie’s position on badges.  These arguments will be elaborated in the final report of the Design Principles Documentation Project (late September) and then in a formal empirical paper with Cathy Tran and Katerina Schenke.

Design Principles for Motivating Learning with Digital Badges

This post is cross-posted at HASTAC

Katerina Schenke, Cathy Tran, & Daniel Hickey

This post introduces the emerging design principles for motivating learning with digital badges. This is the third of four posts that will introduce the Design Principles Documentation Project’s emerging design principles around recognizing, assessing, motivating and studying learning.

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