This document discusses the potential benefits of badges in education. It argues that badges can improve motivation by emphasizing mastery over performance and encouraging progress towards goals. Badges amplified by technology can serve as assessments, instructional tools, instruments for personal growth, and signals of skills and accomplishments. However, badges will only realize their potential if they are used to improve education and support student autonomy, belonging, and competence rather than just adding them or using them for extrinsic motivations like grades.

1. Learning Affordances ofLearning Affordances of
BadgesBadges
(or: Can we afford(or: Can we afford
not tonot to badge?)badge?)
Barry FishmanBarry Fishman
The University ofThe University of
MichiganMichigan
@barryfishman@barryfishman

2. “Common
Core”
We’re Having a Moment
Resource
Constraints
MOOCs
(open ed)
Makers
Connected
Learning
Games
Accountability

4. The Great Unbundling
• The unbundling of education is underway
• OBI-like infrastructure is catalyzing the change:
• Increases the transparency of accomplishments
• Gives learners control over self-presentation
• Opens up access to “deep” evidence behind
claims of accomplishment
• But perhaps most importantly...

5. No Course is an Island
• Without the infrastructure of OBI (or something like it),
it is nearly impossible to realize the potential of badges in
instruction
• Badges depend on individual instructors to employ
them in specific leaning contexts, but...
• Education functions as a system and if the badges earned
in one context don’t have value in others, we get no
traction
• We require ubiquitous (or at least shared) ways to
communicate across contexts, both geographic and
temporal

6. No Learner is an Island
• Without the infrastructure of OBI (or something like it),
it is nearly impossible to realize the potential of badges in
instruction
• Badges depend on individual instructors to employ
them in specific leaning contexts, but...
• Education functions as a system and if the badges earned
in one context don’t have value in others, we get no
traction
• We require ubiquitous (or at least shared) ways to
communicate across contexts, both geographic and
temporal

7. Badges are Not New
• The A-F grading system is literally an “old school”
badging system
• But it is a lousy badge system that emphasizes extrinsic
motivation, privileges too few learning goals, and has
narrow communications bandwidth
• Instructors can’t rely on prior grades as reliable
indicators of prerequisite knowledge
• We know nothing of what students bring in from
outside formal education
• Transcripts are essentially exercises in branding

8. So What Is New?
• This cannot be a conversation about “adding”
badges to education; it must be a conversation
about improving education to create engagement
• The current crop of badge thinking is built upon
improved motivational design:
• Emphasize mastery over performance
• Encourage progress towards goals
• Support autonomy, belonging, competence

9. •The Usual
•Lack of (perceived) control
•Instructor chooses focus
(one size fits all)
•Learners receive grades
•Disincentive to stretch
•High-stakes evaluation
•Incentivize avoidance
“Old” vs. “New” Assessment Systems
TheThe UNusualUNusual
•Self-determinationSelf-determination
•Student chooses focusStudent chooses focus
(different strokes...)(different strokes...)
•LearnersLearners earnearn badges, etc.badges, etc.
•Encourage risk-takingEncourage risk-taking
•Lowered cost of failureLowered cost of failure
•IncentivizeIncentivize progressionprogression

10. Isn’t this just “Gamification”?
• Badges are strongly associated with gaming
• Many people think
games in education = gamification
• Mere “gamification” leads to weak designs
• If we just use badges as grades or resort to
purely extrinsic motivations, we’re doing it
wrong - putting new wine in old bottles

11. “Gamification is bullshit.”
-Ian Bogost, Georgia Tech
A tool to:
•Conceal
•Impress
•Coerce
Source: gizmodo.com

12. Affordances of Badges
Amplified by Technology
• As Assessments
• As Instructional Tools
• As Instruments for Personal Growth
• As Signals

13. Badges as Assessments
• Formative assessments
• Communicate progress towards goals
• Feedback and guidance
• Indicate what has been accomplished so far,
against the backdrop of possibilities
• Summative assessment
• Provide an overview of accomplishments related
to a particular project/assignment/course

14. Badges as Instructional Tools
• Manage instructor expectations
• Better info. about what students know and can do
• Communicate detailed goals to students
• Set expectations about potential outcomes
• Scaffold complex learning
• Provide indicators of steps along a pathway
• Motivate student action
• Help orient student energy and reward progress
(and maybe even lighten things up a bit)

15. Badges as Instruments
for Personal Growth
• Agency & Goal Setting
• Support multiple pathways toward goals
• Identity formation
• Try out different paths
• Self-determination
• Support self re/presentations of accomplishment

16. Badges as Signals
• Recognizing learning/Credentialing
• As a replacement for “thin” transcripts
• Communicating social status
• “Nerd cred,” like “lettermen” jackets of yore
• Coordinating collaboration & teamwork
• To promote skills to others who might need
them, or to aid search for needed skills

17. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting
for someone to give you permission....
Stand up and say,
“I have something to say.
I know how to do something. I’m
doing it.”
“If you want me to do it with you,
raise your hand.”
-Seth Godin
Source: http://www.sethgodin.com