Where Digital Badges Work Better

Join Malcolm Brown, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative director, and Veronica Diaz, ELI associate director, as they moderate this webinar with Daniel Hickey and James Willis. Evidence-rich digital badges are becoming widely used to recognize learning and accomplishment. But they are not yet widely valued by colleges and employers and (therefore) by many learners. The Design Principles Documentation Project studied the efforts to develop badge systems by the 29 projects who received grants to develop digital badge systems in a range of contexts. We found that the most obvious practices for increasing the value of badges (award formal credit and obtain external endorsement) turned out to be the most difficult practice to enact and formalize. Generally speaking, the more successful efforts involved badges that contained information that was unique (i.e., not redundant with other sources) and for learning that was more social and networked. Resources: The DPD website has comprehensive information about the 29 Badges for Lifelong Learning badge development efforts. The interim report from the DPD project has the findings from the first year of the project. Constituent Group. Open Badges in Higher Education project website has lots of current information and case studies.