Documentation:CTLT Resources/Badges 7 Things Report

1. What are Badges?

A badge is a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, or quality or interest that can be earned in any learning environment.

Badges have been used quite extensively in a variety of contexts (e.g. scouts, gaming) as both evidence of a person’s skills and learning and as a motivation tool for people to gain additional skills and learning. Higher education institutions, including universites like Purdue, Carnegie Mellon, and the University of California have begun to experiment with digital badges as both an alternative means of providing recognition and motivation for learning. The use of badges in higher education is being spearheaded by the Mozilla Foundation, creators of Firefox, who recognized the range of skills participants demonstrated during their 2010 Mozilla Festival (MozFest) during their "maker sessions". These same skills were not represented or in some cases recognized due to a lack of formal certification from educational institutions. The Open Badge Initiative (OBI) was developed to bridge the gap in the recognition of out of school/class learning that many people go through on a regular basis.

Examples

Name	Issuer	Criteria
Intro to Open Science: Participation Badge	Peer to Peer University (P2PU)	Join synchronous class sessions to hear about topics around Open Science and discuss them with their peers.
Curiosity Rover Design Challenge	US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA)	Prove your skills as a robotics engineer by choosing one of the Mars Curiosity Design Challenges.
Journeyman Algebraist	Khan Academy	Achieve proficiency in 2-step equations, Percentage word problems 2, Evaluating expressions with function notation, Domain fx., Even/Odd fx, Shif/Ref fx

2. How does it work?

The current proposed standard for badges have the following metadata attached to them:

• Issuer - who issued the badge
• Issue Date - when the badge was awarded
• Criteria - how the badge was earned
• Hyperlink - links to artifacts, documents, etc as evidence of the work performed
• Authentication - verification back to the issuer

A badging system has 5 primary components:

• An Issuer - a teacher, organization, or peer that designs and awards the badge
• Badges - badges can represent a learner's skill level, accomplishments or contributions
• An Earner - any learner who wants to achieve a badge
• A BackPack - a container of all the learner's badges
• A Displayer - a space for the learner to display badges.

3. Who's doing it?

Below are just 3 examples of educational institutions and organizations who have or will be implementing a badging system.

1. Purdue University's Passport

   "Students learn in many ways and in a variety of settings while attending a university such as Purdue," McCartney says. "In addition to formal lectures and homework, there is also time spent in labs and doing field work; time spent in service projects or internships; and experiences they glean from student organizations. The Passport app will give interested faculty and advisers another way to recognize and validate those skills for students."
   Through their college careers, students gain knowledge and skills that may not be well-represented in their college degrees. A student may have learned practical skills such as knowing how to write HTML code, have earned a prestigious scholarship or served as an officer in a student organization.
   - Gerry McCartney, Vice President for Information Technology, CIO and Oesterle Professor of Information Technology, Purdue

2. UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute

   For our learners, who aren’t yet earning badges, we currently have a rubric-based competency assessment framework, where students check boxes to mark their progress and submit those forms to their professors. They don’t get to organize or view that progress across courses or over time, and that makes competency assessment as series of one-off experiences that lack relevance and coherence. The students are hearing about the prospect of replacing that system with badges, and are excited that they might be able to have a tool that is easier to use and provides a more connected and enduring picture of their achievements and competency development.

3. Who Built America: Badges for History Education

   WBA Badges for History Education is designed for middle- and high-school level teachers of U.S. history and social studies. We designed the badge system to recognize and reward the skills of great history teachers: iterative lesson design, professional engagement, content expertise, Common Core proficiency, and effective technology use.

A more comprehensive list is available at the http://www.hastac.org/digital-badges#projects.

4. What's the research behind it?

Digital Badges

Below are selected entries from: Grant, S. & Shawgo, K.E. (2013). Digital Badges: An Annotated Research Bibliography. Retrieved from http://hastac.org/digital-badges-bibliography

• Abramovich, S., Schunn, S., and Higashi, R.M. (2013). "Are badges useful in education?: it depends upon the type." Educational Technology Research and Development, 61(2), 217-232.

Annotation: This article discusses how badges are touted as an alternative assessment that can increase learner motivation. The researchers considered two distinct models for educational badges; merit badges and videogame achievements. To begin unpacking the relationship between badges and motivation, they conducted a study using badges within an intelligent-tutor system for teaching applied mathematics to middle-school students. Their findings indicate that badge earning could be driven by learner motivations and that systems with badges could have a positive effect on critical learner motivations. However, badge acquisition patterns were different across learners with different levels of prior knowledge. Different badge types also affected different learners motivation. Additionally, the researchers believe that their findings are compatible with the research finding that extrinsic motivators have a negative influence on learning. The implication for educational badge designers is that they must consider the ability and motivations of learners when choosing what badges to include in their curricula. The authors believe their findings exist as one piece of the large research base needed to understand educational badges.

Faculty Development

• Sorcinelli, M. D. (2002). Ten principles of good practice in creating and sustaining teaching and learning centers. In K. H. Gillespie, L. R. Hilsen, & E. C. Wadsworth (Eds.), A guide to faculty development: Practical advice, examples, and resource (9-23). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Permalink

Principle 10 in the chapter talks about providing the need for "measures of recognition and rewards" both formally and informally to motivate participation and involvement in teaching and learning centres. An example of formal recognition is being given class-free time to devote to professional development or develop an innovative teaching practice. Another is awarded small teaching grants and resources such as books and software. Examples of informal recognition include luncheons and gift certificates. An interesting example Sorcinelli gives at the end is a designation as a mentor to recognize faculty members who have contributed to the centre. She does not give examples of how the designation is awarded but badges can take on this role.

• Theall, M. and Franklin, J. L. Assessing Teaching Practices and Effectiveness for Formative Purposes. In K. J. Gillespie, D. L. Robertson, & Assoc., A guide to faculty development (2nd), (151-168). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Theall reviewed extracted 6 common components from 14 motivational models:

1. inclusion
2. attitude
3. relevance
4. competence
5. leadership
6. satisfaction

All of which connected to both faculty and students perceptions of their own outcomes, internalization of future success, and becoming self-directed learners. A badging system can support the development of a positive and proactive approach to a faculty member's own development. Badges can be awarded based on the types of workshops they've attended or facilitated. They can be designed based on particular learning path with different levels, depending on their experience, as well as be components for higher level skills.

5. How can we use it at UBC?

UBC has long embraced online learning and with the recent attention to flexible and open pedagogies, interest and awareness in providing alternative methods of motivation and credentialing has also increased. Implementing a badge system intersects with various initiatives and conversations around campus and digital badges may provide an opportunity to support initiatives that would like to provide evidence for a learner’s work and experience outside of traditional credentialing. For example, open courses, such as the Arts One Digital Project, has expressed an interest in using badges to increase participation by learners who are not formally enrolled in the course. Additionally, courses in UBC's MOOC pilot project, which do not award credit, have also expressed interest in awarding digital badges as a motivation tool to help increase engagement in their courses.

The University’s strategic plan on student learning asks the community to implement a plan for the understanding, delivery and assessment of enriched educational experiences.Conversations around eportfolios have been continuing as a space to document a learner’s development throughout their time at UBC and beyond.

CTLT is critically engaged in exploring the issues of recognition and motivation of learners. How do we reward and recognize the professional development of instructors and graduate students when it comes to their teaching? How do we recognize outstanding learners in a MOOC who have provided help to their peers? How can we provide a personalized learning path for community members with varying skills and experiences? How can we connect and share our the community's expertise in order to build capacity at UBC? Badges can provide an opportunity to explore potential solutions to these questions.

With the university determined to invest in a flexible learning initiative, there is a need to recognize the learning that happens everywhere, such as student-organized events, open courses, international exchange opportunities, and professional development activities, that provides added-value to the learning experience at UBC.

• Blackboard
• WP

6. What does the pilot project want to explore?

Software/Technology

• What are the resource requirements for scaling up the badging infrastructure?
• Document tiered support needed during the pilot process.
• Document development process on a blog on UBC Blogs.

Privacy/Security

• What are the privacy preferences of badge earners if we do not develop a locally hosted badge backpack?
• Information will be gathered through online surveys and focus groups.

Earner Learning Experience

• Were earners motivated to earn badges? Did it motivate them to go further and earn other badges? How did it compare with other programs/classes? Do they plan to share their badges? Do they want badges? What other learning contexts can *badges be applied?
• Information will be gathered through online surveys and focus groups.

Issuer Experience

• What was the experience of the issuer? Can we expand the issuers beyond just programs or classes? At what level? Did units/programs/instructors find value in awarding badges? Did they notice a change from their learners? What other learning contexts can badges be applied?
• What recommendations can be made about a process for deciding who can issue UBC Badges
• A post-program/course evaluation will be conducted with participating units, instructors, facilitators.

Sustainability

• Is this something UBC can support going forward? What are the next steps?
• Answers will be derived from an analysis of previously mentioned focus areas.

7. What are the implications to teaching and learning?

The following is taken from the EDUCause Learning Initiative's 7 Things You Should Know About Badges Resource:

Badges could represent an opportunity for higher education to rethink what is of value and recognize achievements that could be codified but currently are not. As an adjunct to institutionally supported learning, badges might provide a new avenue for continuing education. They support lifelong learning, not just through traditional academic or formalized learning pathways but also the kind of knowledge that comes from personal initiative and investigation.

If badges are able to widely establish themselves as trusted credentials, they could help people plot their own path to learning, pursuing projects and experiences they feel are worthwhile. Badges have sparked lively conversation in the academic community. Some suggest they could disrupt the monopoly of credentialing that has been the province of higher education, while others insist that institutions will embrace badges to augment the traditional curriculum and add depth to the student portfolio.

Whatever the future holds for these awards, it is clear badges offer an opportunity to reevaluate credentials, expanding their role by making otherwise hidden accomplishments visible.