Maybe a colleague just introduced you to badges or perhaps you’ve been involved with badging for awhile. No matter your level of expertise, it’s always good to ask yourself, “Why?” Digital badges have their purpose, but they don’t always fit with every situation. Here are a few things to consider.
Youth Programs
Most digital badging platforms require the learner to create an account. Or at least they need an email address or cell phone number. All of these solutions require a student to be age 13 or older according to U.S. COPPA laws. Student’s 12 and younger require the consent of a parent/guardian to create an online account. Also, consider what a young student would do with a digital badge. Put it on a resume or LinkedIn?
If working with youth 12 and younger, look for ways to use badge images as gamification instead of traditional digital badges. Look at creating digital leaderboards where you can create competitions between individual learners to teams. Or even using physical badges, buttons, or stickers that you can use to recognize achievements.
Conference or Workshop Attendance
Badging conference or workshop attendance is becoming a new trend. These badges can assist in certifying professional development experiences for the workplace or continuing education. They can also be a quick entry point that leads to more robust badges that are part of further workshops or conference participation. For conferences, think of issuing badges for presenters or leadership positions.
Digital Divide
Consider your audience. The digital divide is real, whether you’re in a city or a rural environment, there are many populations that don’t have computers at home or regular access to a computer. This doesn’t mean you should use digital badges, but need to consider how you design your program around them. Can you provide access to a computer lab? Are you prepared to support learners with limited technical experience? Is your website or digital badging platform mobile friendly?
Digital On-Ramps deals with these issues on a regular basis and can assist you with implementing badges for your program that best fits your learner’s needs.
Digital badges can work for a variety of programs and experiences. Consider using digital badges for the following situations:
The Open Badging standards outline a set of key data points that are necessary for badges being used for professional development, certifications, or other programs a learner may want to share with an employer or post-secondary opportunity.
Issuer: The name of your organization. This often includes a link to the organization’s website. Description: This is a brief explanation about the program or experience the learner participated in to earn the badge. Criteria: This describes the requirements of your program including any products that were developed and skills/competencies demonstrated.
Standards: A list of recognized skills or competencies that were learned and demonstrated by the learner. This could include 21st century standards, industry defined competencies, or national education standards.
Issued Date: The date the badge was issued (digital badging platforms will handle this for you).
Expiration Date: Used for certifications that need renewed over a certain time period.
Evidence: This includes links to presentations, images, videos, or other works created by the learner as part of earning the badge.
Tags: These are simple terms that describe the interest or industry area associated with the program. These can be used as search terms for employers, portfolio systems, and others systems.
The first think we ask our partners is how are you assessing the work of programs currently? This doesn’t need to change with digital badging. However, some digital badging platforms, such as Badge List, and LRNG, provide tools for learners to submit evidence, assisting with validation.
Keep assessment simple whenever possible. Many programs that involve physical labor use a combination of attendance and visual assessment. Attendance is taken at the beginning of the day and each learner’s work is visually assessed by instructors. The badges are then issued later without the learner needing to interact with a website to submit evidence.
Providing value to a badge can be difficult depending on the type of program. Workshop or conference based badges have currency by providing validating professional development or continuing education experiences for a learner’s employer. Other badges can contain value if connected to opportunities like job shadowing, access to advanced programs, or connected with apprenticeships.
When using badges for summer camps and youth programs, consider offering advanced badges based on leadership or advanced skills for learners that return year to year.
Learning Pathways, or Playlists, can be used in a variety of programs, but they’re not for everything. Pathways can be used to simply help a learner track their progress, or they can be used to award small achievements as part of a micro-credential or certification. The smaller badges within a pathway can be used to represent modules within your curriculum, or different aspects of a program such as workshop attendance, project completion, or a set of volunteer hours.
Most importantly, the different parts of a Learning Pathway don’t need to be earned linearly. Depending on the program, learners could complete modules in any order.
