Running head: DIGITAL BADGES IN EDUCATION
Digital Badges in Education: Models, Uses, and Impact
Kevin O’Shea
Purdue University
EDCI 513 – Fall 2014
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Abstract
Digital badges are a method of showcasing a learner’s earned skills or competencies in
education. The idea of utilizing a visual representation of achievement is not new, but the idea of
utilizing it as a credential model is one that is currently emerging. Digital badges allow
instructors to create measurable course outcomes and explicitly tracked tasks and activities for
completion by a learner. The information attached to the badge is specific and explicit metadata
including issuer (the who), criteria (the what), and evidence (the how). The purpose of this article
is to demonstrate the history, current models and methodology, and future implications of digital
badges in higher education. In this article, examples will be covered as to why digital badges are
relevant as a model for credentialing all aspects of learning in today’s education field.
Keywords: badges, pedagogy, technology, higher education
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Digital Badges in Education: Models, Uses, and Impact
The concept of recognizing earned skills or mastery of specific competencies using a
visual metaphor or representation is neither new nor revolutionary. Many youth oriented
programs (Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America) have used badges as a method of
awarding badges to members who have completed tasks or activities to show gained knowledge
and mastery of specific competencies as a means of tracking growth and increasing motivation.
In more recent years, the idea has spread to the virtual realm with the concept of digital badges.
Many video game platforms (X-Box, Playstation), social networks (Foursquare), forums (Stack
Overflow), and learning platforms (Khan Academy), utilize digital badges as a means of
rewarding members that contribute to the general community, complete specific tasks and as a
method of motivating specific behaviors.
Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI)
The Mozilla Foundation (n.d.), the makers of Firefox and other initiatives, have created
an open specification for creating, issuing, and displaying open badges online through the Open
Badges Infrastructure (OBI). Mozilla's Open Badges require the embedding of metadata directly
to the image of the digital badge, allowing for deeper context as to how, specifically, a learner
has earned their mastery (The Mozilla Foundation, Peer 2 Peer University, & The MacArthur
Foundation, 2012). The potential value argued by the Mozilla Foundation et al. (2012), of a
digital badge is that rather than having implicit meaning, compared to the current credential
model, it has very explicit meaning to the instructor, learner, and potential third-party evaluators.
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Attached to each digital badges, through the use of metadata, are the issuer (who), criteria
(what), and the evidence (how) of what occurred to capture that learning. Digital badges, as a
potential credential model in education, offer a “fine-grained” approach capturing and assessing
learning outcomes. (Bowen & Thomas, 2014)
Digital Badge Types & Models
Utilizing methods of rewarding behavior or achievement as a means to further motivation
is not an unknown concept in education. Principles of behaviorist theory focus on the ability to
strengthen or weaken a response through reinforcement (Driscoll, 2005). Many initial uses of
digital badges have taken a reinforcement approach to issuing recognition of achievement. Video
games are an often-used example of this early model of awarding specific achievements as a
motivating factor to complete the next round of tasks or levels. It has evolved to also allow
gamers to share their in-game achievement with friends and peers outside of the game through
online portfolio or profile. As mentioned by Abramovich, Schunn, & Higashi (2013), this model
strictly is meant to encourage more time spent playing the game.
From the work of O’Shea and Wright (2014), two models of digital badges have emerged
in their collaboration with faculty at Purdue University. Issuing a call for collaborators in in the
spring of 2012 (Thomas, 2012), O’Shea and Wright as members and researchers of the
Informatics team worked directly with early adopters interested in badging in education. O’Shea
and Wright (2014) assisted in the instructional design and creation of tasks needed to earn digital
badges, and found that the majority of badges fell into one of two categories of ‘Participation
Badges’ or ‘Skills Badges’.
As seen in Figure #1, the first classification is that of ‘Participation Badges’. Participation
badges centered on activities that were surface level only loosely connected to specific course
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defined outcomes and objectives. An example of types of activities used for participation badges
would include awarding badges for high attendance, or attending events. These types of badges
encompass surface, low-level learning.
The second classification was that of skills-based badges. Skills badges attempt to
capture specific goals and learning outcomes through the activities completed by the learner.
These badges represent a deeper form of learning where students can pursue a greater
understanding of a particular topic.
Figure 1. Participation Badges & Skill Badges. This figure illustrates the difference between two
identified types of digital badges.
This isn’t to say that one type of badge is inherently better than the other, but that they
can be used together to meet the needs of the students and their learning goals. O’Shea and
Wright (2014) through their collaboration and support of instructors and users of Purdue’s badge
platform, Open Passport (http://openpassport.org), developed a low-tech approach to
conceptualizing skills and outcomes-based badges. Through the collaboration and experience in
designing instructional digital badges, O’Shea & Wright (2014) created a ‘Digital Badge
Worksheet’. This worksheet was created to utilize a step-by-step approach for an instructor new
to the concept of digital badges by ideating on instructional goals and specific learner tasks
needed for completion prior to learning a new software application. The worksheet lists six (6)
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categories for an instructor to reflect and fill out pertinent information as an exercise to
illuminate the key areas of concern when creating digital badges. The top categories of the
worksheet are required components of the Mozilla Foundation’s (n.d.) Open Badge
Infrastructure. The categories of learning outcomes, learning activities, and required evidence
and assessment are additions added by O’Shea & Wright (2014) as aspects of the instructional
design process for digital badges in education.
Learning Outcomes
The ability to demonstrate acquired knowledge, skills, and attitude is essential to the outcomesbased learning model in education (Spady, 1994). Spady (1994) claims that acquired knowledge
from the content must be demonstrated. The Digital Badge Worksheet from O’Shea & Wright
(2014), requires instructors and designers to ideate and craft measurable learning outcomes with
the goal of thinking about the specific things learners should be able to demonstrate from earning
the digital badge.
Learning Activities
Once the Learning Outcomes have been defined, the specific activities for completion of the
digital badge need to be created. These activities should be directly related to the prior defined
outcomes (O’Shea & Wright, 2014).
Required Evidence & Assessment Criteria
A core component to open badges defined by the Mozilla Foundation et al. (2012), is the
attached criteria and learner evidence that provides an explicit verification of requirements,
assessment, and completion of the badge. O’Shea and Wright (2014) identified this as a
challenging aspect for first time users of digital badge platforms.
Current Implementations of Digital Badges at Purdue University
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From the Mozilla Foundation’s Badge Issuer wiki (n.d.) \badges as a model of measuring
performance or behavior are being issued across multiple organizations from NASA, the
Smithsonian, Pixar, and many more. . Purdue University has provided a digital badging platform,
Open Passport, as a means for instructors to create, assess, and issue digital badges. Digital
badges are earned by learners through the completion of specific tasks, known as challenges.
Challenges can be submitting content (documents, files, web links, etc.), take quizzes, submitting
a survey, or manual instructor approval. (Harrison, Randall, and West, 2013)
The baccalaureate-nursing program at Purdue has implemented nine (9) digital badges in
the sophomore-level 'Essentials of Nursing' course (Thomas, 2014). This professional program at
Purdue has revamped their curriculum to align with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
(IHI) and their online course, IHI Open School.
Students follow online e-learning modules based around specific areas in healthcare
service and are assessed through the IHI Open School system. Upon completion of each module,
students are given an online certificate that can be printed or downloaded as a PDF. Professors
Pamela Karagory and Kristen Kirby identified a need of collecting these certifications, student
research projects, and reflections outside of the IHI Open School platform (Thomas,
2014). Working with the team at Studio by Purdue (http://purdue.edu/studio), Professors
Karagory and Kirby were able to create digital badges that aligned to their curriculum outcomes.
DIGITAL BADGES IN EDUCATION
Figure 2: Digital badges issued in Purdue University’s School of Nursing. This figure
illustrates the required digital badges for students in Nursing 220 at Purdue.
Collaboration between Purdue University and the Nanohub organization, an online
course platform for nanotechnology related topics, has yielded an approach of credentialing
worldwide learners with digital badges. Users from around the world can sign up and take selfpaced (free), and instructor-led courses (for a fee) (Tally & Bowen, 2012). Originally students
were given certificates of completion. However, after feedback from learners it was identified
that certificates of completion did not contain much explicit information of the learning process
and it was suggested that digital badges could be used instead. Now, learners of NanohubU will
earn digital badges capturing the criteria and evidence of their learning in the online courses.
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Figure 3: NanoHub U digital badges. This figure illustrates digital badges given in the Purdue
hosted open online courses through the NanHub organization.
Limitations in Literature & the Future
Digital badges as a research area are ripe with prospect as models and theories of usage have yet
to be fully fleshed out. Much of the current literature centers on the proposed potential that
digital badges may or may not have in education. Many questions about the efficacy of digital
badges as a true measure of learning exist, such as the thoughts from MIT Professor, Mitch
Resnick quoted in Campus Technology, concerning the idea that students will focus the majority
of their time on gaining badges instead of synthesizing learned information into meaningful
connections (Watters, 2012). Other gaps in the today’s current research field, but still worthy of
consideration in further exploration or conversation in the realm of digital badges and learning
are related to the idea of badge proliferation, protecting student privacy, and the full implications
of replacing the current credential model in education.
‘Official’ Badges
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The idea of badge proliferation is one area of concern, as it requires the instructor to ask
the question ‘Are all badges created equal?’. Much like the current credential model, a governing
body may be in need of approving high level, high stakes badges at institutions of higher
education to ensure a standard of accreditation. However, what does that mean for specific
departments and individual instructors? Going forward, it will be imperative to discuss the
impact of ‘official’ university issued badges, and those from an individual instructor.
FERPA: Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act
As more programs enlist the idea of a visual and explicit credential to capture learning
and earned competencies, what does the individual learner have to agree to share or display? The
Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act, also known as FERPA, is the set of government
guidelines of the handling of private data for enrolled students in education (FERPA, 2014). In
an ever-shifting world of tricky privacy agreements, and data breaches, it will be the
responsibility of the instructor to consider the ramifications of asking a student to explicitly post
their completed work to the entirety of the World Wide Web. Many applications that issue digital
badges offer cascading options of privacy for the learner, but to this writer, it will ultimately be
the responsibility of the instructor to reflect on the appropriateness of the assignment or task and
the impact it will place on the learner if/when shared with the world.
Conclusion & Further Discussion
Research around motivation and badges will be crucial as a next step in measuring the
effectiveness of using an explicit means of showcasing earned skills and competencies. As of
2014, there is yet to be a fully developed, or recognized curriculum that awards digital badges in
place of or an alternative to the traditional grading model. Further research will be needed to
truly measure and observe the impact that digital badges potentially have in the realm of
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education, and if they live up to the promise of capturing all forms of learning (Bowen &
Thomas, 2014). With the goal from the Mozilla Foundation et al. (2012) to impact the current
credentialing model for measuring obtained knowledge, it will be imperative to create badges
that allow for measurable outcomes that capture the learner’s ability to demonstrate obtained
knowledge, skills, and attitude Spady, 1994). Another area of future research and understanding
will be that of the motivation of learners in this alternative credentialing model and if the explicit
presentation of learning outcomes, required criteria, and attached evidence of completion have
any influence the learning process or completion of digital badges (Harrison, Randall, and West,
2013). The final, and most unclear impact of digital badges that will need to be measured is on
the effect they may or may not have for learners to successfully obtain future employment.
Harrison et al., (2013) identify the need to effectively poll and measure potential perceptions
from employers on the value of reviewing badges as an appropriate portfolio asset.
Ertmer and Newby (2013) mention the need for instructors and designers to be prepared
for the new learning design challenges that technology is starting to highlight. With the call for
an increase in skills and competency-based learning, instructional design and learning theory are
needed to properly address and implement solutions. Even Purdue's President has joined the
conversation (Daniels, 2014), challenging the academic community at the University to find a
competency-based instructional model. One potential method of measuring and showcasing
skills based learning is through the area of digital badges, but to truly understand their impact,
there is much left to research and measure.
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