Badges in Blackboard Validating achievements.

A Brief History

•  Origins with US Army, Boy/Girl Scouts •  First digital achievements with Microsoft,

2005 •  Eva Baker, “the path of Qualifications

shifts attention from schoolwork to usable and compelling skills, from school life to real life.”

Who’s Using Them?

•  Mozilla, Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU), and Khan Academy

•  Huffington Post, Foursquare •  Disney-Pixar, 4H, NASA •  Soon to come: PBS, Intel, and the US

Department of Education

Implementation in Blackboard

•  Achievements Tool –  Coming with installation of Service Pack 13 –  Includes Certificates and Badges

•  Achievements are not awarded arbitrarily and are based on specific student performance metrics

Implementation in Blackboard

•  Example –  An Achievement could be tied to a student completing 4

assignments and have a final grade of 90%

•  Student can track progress of Achievements earned and ones they still can earn

•  Students can see their progress on Achievements they are working on

Certificates •  Certificates –  Certificates are 8x11 and can be printed –  Certificates can only be viewed in Blackboard

Badges

•  Digital Badges that students can collect •  Badges can be pushed to Mozilla Open

Backpack

Demonstration in Test Site

1

2

3

4

1

2

3

1

2

3

1

2

3

View Achievement Earners

Course Completion

Badge Uses

•  Help students to document achievements within the course and what goals remain

•  Provide students the ability to display Badges to others (job interviews)

Future of Badges •  Working with Mozilla, the MacArthur

Foundation and a consortium interested in virtual learning, former President Bill Clinton announced a project on June 13th 2013 to expand the use of Open Badges (New York Times)

•  Chicago’s initiative keeps kids learning all summer - As kids complete activities, they earn digital badges from the city (Chicago Sun-Times 2013)

Future of Badges •  Badges for Lifelong Learning

Competition supported by: –  John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation –  The Gates Foundation –  Administered by co-located HASTAC teams based at

the University of California Humanities Research Institute and John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. 

Using Badges •  Blackboard •  Moodle •  Passport Assessment System by Purdue

University •  University of Rhode Island, Harvard, and MIT,

recognize digital badge accomplishments in the admission process

•  Building a 21st Century Resume with metadata

Readings

•  Research Design Principles for Studying Learning with Digital Badges –  Daniel Hickey, Associate Prof & Program Head, Learning Sciences,

Indiana University –  http://www.hastac.org/blogs/dthickey/2013/07/07/research-

design-principles-studying-learning-digital-badges –  Daniel Hickey was recently awarded a $400,000 grant by the

MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning Initiative to study how digital badges,

•  Digital Badges in Higher Education: An Overview –  Brett Bixler and Ken Layng, ITS Training Services, Penn State

University –  https://docs.google.com/document/d/

1UqNeLzIu0i0EkiqdJEivIJrqVJ5Afikl7OSKKOzQgI8/edit#

Questions for Mia or Dan?