Blog 5 – Digital Badges
“A digital badge is a validated indicator of accomplishment, skill, quality, or interest that can be earned in many learning environments.” (hastac.org/initiatives/digital-badges). They are similar to scout badges where you would earn a badge for a particular achievement. Examples could include running a marathon, swimming 100m, completing an online programming tutorial, learning chords on guitar. These badges / achievements can then be visible to employers, parents or friends.
There was a limited selection of companies that had their own badges (BASNO, HASTAC) until Mozilla Open Badges came along in 2011 providing a platform allowing anyone to create their own. According to openbadges.org, there are over 3000 companies using them.
A criticism I have is that many of these companies seem to have left their badges in 2015. Based on admittedly limited research, the notion does not seem to have taken off. I hadn’t heard of them before and I work in software development. I tried to find specific companies or schools that use them and came up short. Any sites that mention them did so several years ago. My worry is that anyone using this initiative, learning new skills and achieving badges over several years would attempt to share them with people that don’t know what they are so put no value in them. Sure, the skills themselves could come in handy but the badges could be worthless, an unrecognised achievement.
I believe the most obvious link to education is as a reward. Teachers are able to give their students badges for their school-based or community achievements. As an award scheme, they could work well, providing an incentive for children to attempt a variety of different things in order to show off their badges to classmates, friends or parents. Depending on the criteria of the badge, children would be encouraged to participate in independent, collaborative, social and / or community-based endeavours which could lead to a general motivation to becoming a successful independent learner.
A further criticism is to do with badges as a motivator themselves. Children, by their nature, have an intrinsic motivation to learn things they are interested in. These digital badges provide an extrinsic motivator that may be at odds with the learners own interests, possibly even promoting behaviour favourable to the badge issuer instead of the recipient.
Overall, I see digital badges as a good concept that never really took off. Like QR codes.
I definitely support your criticisms, would you agree that by reward children simply with some online pixels it takes away any sort of tangible sense of achievement?
I would agree to a certain extent, you don’t get much for your effort. But there have been online achievements for years that children have put value in like the achievement system on Xbox 360. I myself used to chase particular achievements to show off the little number to my friends. There’s a social element to it so perhaps if the whole class enjoys a system like this and the school creates an environment where they are valued, they could work better as motivation.