Badges Design Principles Documentation Project Interim Report

Summary: Hickey, D. Otto, N., Schenke, Tran, C, and Chow, C. (2014). Badges Design Principles Documentation Project Interim Report. Badges Design Principles Documentation Project.

Purpose (Why?): Capture the “best practice” design principles for using open digital badges badges.

Central Message (What?): 30 organizations were awarded grants to develop badges.  The Design Principles Documentation (DPD) project is trying to identify the design principles used to create and establish badges when paired with learning.   Badges have the potential to “break open existing economies for recognized learning.”  This paper is not a final report, rather it is documenting where things are and the midway point of the study.

Validation / Application (How?): Here are the basic badge design principles from the design project as specifically documented in the report:

Design Principles for Recognizing Learning with Digital Badges

• Use badges to map learning trajectory
• Align badges to standards
• Have experts issue badges
• Seek external backing of credential
• Recognize diverse learning
• Use badges as a means of external communication
• Determine appropriate lifespan of badges
• Recognize educator learning
• Award formal academic credit for badges
• Promote discovery

Design Principles for Assessing Learning in Digital Badge Systems

• Use leveled badge systems
• Enhance validity with expert judgment
• Align assessment activities to standards: create measurable learning objectives
• Use performance assessments in relevant contexts
• Use e-portfolios
• Use formative functions of assessment
• Use mastery learning
• Use rubrics
• Promote “hard” and “soft” skill sets
• Involve students at a granular level

Design Principles for Motivating Learning with Digital Badges

• Recognize identities
• Engage with the community
• Display badges to the public
• Provide outside value of badges
• Set goals
• Promote collaboration
• Stimulate competition
• Recognize different outcomes
• Utilize different types of assessments
• Provide privileges

Design Principles for Studying Learning in Digital Badge Systems

Using traditional evidence:

• Study badge impact: Research OF badges
• Improve badge impact: Research FOR badges
• Improve badge ecosystems: Research FOR ecosystems

Using the evidence contained in badges:

• Study badge impact with badge evidence: Research WITH & OF badges
• Improve badge impact with badge evidence: Research WITH & FOR badges
• Improve badge ecosystems with badge evidence: Research WITH & FOR ecosystems”

General Findings:

1. Badges can be used to recognize learning
2. Three grand theories of knowing and learning:
   1. Associationist perspectives: learning consists of numerous small associations
   2. Rationalist perspectives: constructivist approach – structured approach using rubrics
   3. Sociocultural perspectives: social and cultural practices involved in learning

Values / Assumptions: Some of the values and assumptions visible in the research are:

• Badges area smart way to assess learning
• Badge recognition will automatically recognize learning
• Badges are a good reflection of actual learning
• Awarding a badge is motivation to learners
• Collaboration in learning is a better way to learn
• Competition in learning is good
• Privileges provided = learning achieved
• Performance = learning

• Learning accountability is important, but learner performance is a much more important piece to learning
• awards systems for learning is a way to motivate the

So What: I happen to enjoy the Max Lucado book, “You are special” because I believe the overall message of the book is enlightening and meaningful.  I especially like the because the authors way of describing the culture these wmmicks live in where they make up these arbitrary ways of assessing one another.  The ways in which they give out stars or dots makes some feel really great about themselves, while others who can’t perform are left to know for themselves that like they are less than the others.

As I think about this concept of stars and dots, I make the easy correlation to badges.  Of course we who are badge advocates look at this movement as a way to recognize learning and to build a more meaningful way of determining if individuals have the skills they need to help out companies. Besides, it is a beneficial value add to a community, and especially to businesses if people who are being trained and hired for the work are capable of performing the work well.  But does it perpetuate a culture that praises certain skills and diminishes others?  Yes. Does it exacerbate the bourgeoisie and the proletariat?  Perhaps.  Is it a better way to assess learning?  I’m not yet convinced.  Here’s why:

In the badges model, students are graded and measured upon their ability to complete various tasks or groups of tasks to achieve competency.  In fact, it is assumed that the groups of tasks being completed accurately measures what is needed for the individual to be competent not only in the existing task, but when applying the skill in new situations.  However this approach is faulty in its assumptions.  For example, from 2006 to 2009, during his years as a Southeastern Conference (SEC – the SEC is the quintessential competency-based learning model for the game of college football) college quarterback, Tim Tebow was touted as the greatest college football player to ever to play the game.   He was twice a first-team All-American, Sport Illustrated College Football Player of the Decade, led his team to two national championships, and won the Heisman Trophy as a quarterback which goes to the finest college football player in the country, yet was deemed incompetent to play the quarterback position by NFL scouts.  By all accounts he earned all the necessary badges and then some by proving he could play the game of football at an extremely high level, but when it came time to make playing the game a profession, he was considered incompetent. How can a player be considered the greatest ever and also be rated as incompetent?  It shows that the competency-based learning model measurements (including badges) are at best subjective.

But in this whole hustle and bustle of improving workers and capturing learning for the individual are we overlooking what is really at the core of learning: developing a complete and whole individual able to contribute to his/her society meaningful service in his/her chosen avenue of pursuit? Altruistic as it sounds, it is the only pursuit of learning that anyone involved in the art should be reaching for, anything less is counterfeit and not worthy of our time and effort.