Designing Effective Digital Badges

Designing Effective Digital Badges is a hands-on guide to the principles, implementation, and assessment of digital badging systems. Informed by the fundamental concepts and research-based characteristics of effective badge design, this book uses real-world examples to convey the advantages and challenges of badging and showcase its application across a variety of contexts. Professionals in education, game development, mobile app development, and beyond will find strategies for practices such as credentialing, goal-setting, and motivation of their students.

This edited volume provides insight into how digital badges may enhance formal, non-formal and informal education by focusing on technical design issues including organizational requirements, learning and instructional design, as well as deployment. It features current research exploring the theoretical foundation and empirical evidence of the utilization of digital badges as well as case studies that describe current practices and experiences in the use of digital badges for motivation, learning, and instruction in K-12, higher education, workplace learning, and further education settings.

In recent years, digital badging systems have become a credible means through which learners can establish portfolios and articulate knowledge and skills for both academic and professional settings. Digital Badges in Education provides the first comprehensive overview of this emerging tool. A digital badge is an online-based visual representation that uses detailed metadata to signify learners’ specific achievements and credentials in a variety of subjects across K-12 classrooms, higher education, and workplace learning. Focusing on learning design, assessment, and concrete cases in various contexts, this book explores the necessary components of badging systems, their functions and value, and the possible problems they face. These twenty-five chapters illustrate a range of successful applications of digital badges to address a broad spectrum of learning challenges and to help readers formulate solutions during the development of their digital badges learning projects.

Digital Badges are gaining traction in the education landscape, and librarians have been some of the leading pioneers at the forefront of this exciting new frontier. This book provides examples of how badges are being used to enhance and invigorate the teaching and assessment of information literacy. Chapters provide inspiration for teaching librarians interested in: Providing an engaging experience for their students Gaining insight into this growing innovative technology trend Discovering how librarians are using badges to enhance their teaching Forming meaningful collaborations with faculty and teachers Developing knowledge about badge system design and badging platforms Learning how badges can motivate, support, and celebrate learning achievements Launching a badging project The book is divided into two sections. The first section explores the environment in which badges are being developed, in particular situating them within the current educational setting, and provides guidelines on how best to create a badging program. The second section details contributing authors’ firsthand experiences creating, implementing, and refining digital badges and digital badging systems, in some cases collaborating with teachers and faculty. These chapters provide a wealth of ideas about using digital badges in academic and school libraries to engage and motivate students.

The world of academic credentials is going through a rapid change that has seen the emergence of alternate digital credentials. Among these are micro-certificates, digital diplomas, and open digital badges, which provide a digital record of learning and have the possibility of not only altering the landscape of academic credentials but also transforming the relationship between institutions of higher education, their learners, and society. As institutions turn their attention to alternate digital credentials, it is important to learn from what others have experienced. Innovations in the Design and Application of Alternative Digital Credentials identifies innovative examples of the use of alternate digital credentials to validate specific skills within an existing academic program or on their own. Alternate digital credentials may be how specific skills (hard or soft) are validated with an emphasis on their relationship to enhance employability and recognition within an industry. Covering a wide range of topics such as micro-credentials, badge-driven learning, and traditional credentials, this handbook is ideal for researchers, students, academicians, and administrative decision makers, as well as those who support and finance learning systems and theories and those already involved in the design and application of alternate digital credentials at the post-secondary level.

As teaching strategies continue to change and evolve, and technology use in classrooms continues to increase, it is imperative that their impact on student learning is monitored and assessed. New practices are being developed to enhance students’ participation, especially in their own assessment, be it through peer-review, reflective assessment, the introduction of new technologies, or other novel solutions. Educators must remain up-to-date on the latest methods of evaluation and performance measurement techniques to ensure that their students excel. Learning and Performance Assessment: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a vital reference source that examines emerging perspectives on the theoretical and practical aspects of learning and performance-based assessment techniques and applications within educational settings. Highlighting a range of topics such as learning outcomes, assessment design, and peer assessment, this multi-volume book is ideally designed for educators, administrative officials, principals, deans, instructional designers, school boards, academicians, researchers, and education students seeking coverage on an educator’s role in evaluation design and analyses of evaluation methods and outcomes.

While many school districts and institutions of higher education still cling to the traditional agrarian school year with a factory model delivery of education and Carnegie units based on seat time when most people are no longer farmers, factory workers, or reliant on learning in a classroom, there are bursts of promising practices that buck the norm by questioning the educational value of these traditions. Though researchers have investigated the potential of students learning in their own homes via personalized instruction delivered by computers rather than attending traditional institutions, the status quo in education has remained stubbornly resistant to change. Mixed-reality simulations, year-round schooling, grouping students by competencies instead of age, and game-based teaching are just a few of the educational innovations that seek to maximize learning by recognizing that innovation is essential for successfully teaching students in the modern era. The Handbook of Research on Innovations in Non-Traditional Educational Practices is a comprehensive reference source that examines various educational innovations, how they have developed workarounds to navigate traditional systems, and their potential to radically transform teaching and learning. With each chapter highlighting a different educational innovation such as experiential learning, game-based learning, online learning, and inquiry-based learning and their applications in all levels of education, this book explores the issues and challenges these educational innovations face as well as their impact. It is intended for academicians, professionals, administrators, and researchers in education and specifically benefits academic deans, vice presidents of academic affairs, graduate students, faculty technology leaders, directors of teaching and learning centers, curriculum and instructional designers, policymakers, principals and superintendents, and teachers interested in educational change.

Digital badges offer a new way of showing off some of your most impressive accomplishments. Readers will discover new processes, integrate visual information with text, and learn technical word meanings as they find out how digital badges work and how to begin earning them. They will also find out how to create and award badges of their own to people who accomplish amazing tasks.