Documentation:OpenBadges/Faculty Guide/Web Design/Badge Assessment
Quiz Questions
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Scenario: You are teaching a highly interactive course where learners need to contribute in multiple discussion fora on a regular basis. Your goal is for students to reveal their own processes of meaning making, synthesis and interpretation in their posts. Comments and questions to their peers contribute to this process and build a learning community. You are struggling to get some learners engaged with the content and with their peers. This community building aspect is an important component and requirement of the course , though many learners fall behind or simply post and do not comment on others' posts. You are thinking about adding an incentive to your course to increase student motivation using Open Badges.
Can Open Badges be your road to salvation? Let's find out! |
The following quiz is based on the information provided on the website. There is no right or wrong answer with Open Badges, only a wide range of possibilities. The scenario above will help you choose the more appropriate answer to each question, and eventually earn a badge.
1. What would be the more appropriate learning pathway to increase student engagement?
- command pathway
- contract pathway
- desire pathway
Answer: The desire pathway will likely lead to increased engagement as students will choose how and in what order they earn badges. For example if you have a badge for contribution (for posts and comments) and one for review (helping a peer clarify a concept for example) - perhaps they could lead to a metalevel badge called Peer Review or Community. Badges could be earned in any order but the result of earning two badges would be the earning of a metalevel badge.
2. What level of participation would be required to earn a badge?
- Low-level participation
- High-level participation
- Both
Answer: Where students are making sense of course concepts and readings, posing their own questions and commenting on the posts of others with the goal of supporting their learning, this requires a high level of engagement. If this aspect of community building and peer support for learning is integral to your course, you may want to revise your learning outcomes and assessment strategies to reflect its value. Badging for this sort of engagement might include a low-level participation badge for posing an early comment to a discussion or in response to a peer to act as a motivator to earn badges, but the real value to earners would be in the Community badge - which would require them to demonstrate skills and competencies.
3. What might be an appropriate criteria for achieving a badge in this scenario?
- Creating at least 5 post / commenting on at least 5 posts / reviewing and rating at least 3 posts
- Creating at least 1 post / reviewing and rating several posts
- Commenting on at least 1 post / reviewing and rating several posts
- Completing a quiz / reviewing and rating several posts
Answer: The criteria you develop should reflect "what counts as evidence" for others reviewing the badge outside of the course. Given the high level of participation required of learners in this scenario, the criteria should match the requirement.
4. What would be the value of a badge in this scenario for your learners?
- Demonstration of skills (written communication, synthesis, insight, teaching support)
- Demonstration and application of knowledge (knowledge of content, knowledge of self, knowledge of others)
- Both knowledge and skills
Answer: Effective badging systems acknowledge competencies that have broad application and value within a discipline or profession (like coding for computer scientists, information architecture for librarians, lab etiquette for scientists, etc.). Competencies that demonstrate both knowledge and skills like communication and the application of knowledge to advance learning within a community - have value across many disciplines.
5. Which of these approaches might be represented in the learning pathway you define for achieving badges?
- cluster
- level-based
- possibility of choice
- all of the above
- linear
Answer: It is likely that a linear approach (where students would need to earn badges in a prescribed order) would not apply to this scenario, but may be appropriate in another context where skills and competencies built on one another. In this case, you may use a cluster approach to identifying badges (if you have many themes in a course, learners may choose to contribute to a particular theme or cluster of themes to earn a badge. You may also have level-based badges, where learners who contribute a single comment and response for each theme gets a level 1 "contributor" badge, and more actively engaged learners might earn a level 2 "community" badge - as an example. Finally, to ensure that learners are engaged, you may want them to have a choice when it comes to engaging more actively with particular course themes that are of interest and which badges they want to earn and in what order.
6. In the badging scenario described, what would be the incentive for engagement once badges are implemented?
- Metalevel badge
- Participation mark
- Both
Answer: It depends on your expectations for the course. If engagement in discussion is essential to achieving specific learning outcomes, you could decide to associate part of a course grade with this - a badge might be associated with the grade (ie. if you achieved a metalevel badge, you are awarded 100% for that portion of the grade assessment). However, badges may also be associated with competencies and skills that, while not foundational to the course, may have high value outside of the course - In which case, motivation to earn a badge to demonstrate a particular competency or skill is not necessarily part of the course's assessment strategies, but can nonetheless be valued by learners.
7. Co-curricular badges help instructors micro-credential skills and competencies in a course of study. An example of a micro-credential is:
- Awarding a badge to a student for commenting on a course reading and correctly identifying the dominant ideas, hypothesis, evidentiary statements, and the author’s bias.
- Awarding a badge to a student for receiving 75% or higher on a major exam.
- Awarding a badge to a student for contributing an article/ blog/ research finding in a public forum (conference, online journal, Wikipedia, etc.)
- Awarding a badge to a student for creating a profile on the course website.
- All of the above.
Answer: All of the above may be considered an example of micro-credentials - though the value of such credentials will be highly dependent on context.
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- What's the value of badges in the context of your course or project?
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