Abstract
Digital badges are a relatively new idea for educational institutions, other nonprofits, and corporations certifying that a person has achieved a certain level of competency with specified skills and/or knowledge. They are like a modern-day version of Boy Scout merit badges, although this new book edited by Lin Y. Muilenburg (St. Mary’s College of Maryland) and Zane L. Berge (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) does not mention the Boy Scouts until page 102. The other forerunner is Microsoft’s 2005 launch of the Xbox 360 Gamerscore system, which was followed by badges used in HuffPost and Foursquare games. They also reminded this reviewer of public high school education using competency testing many years ago (Chapter 4 links badging to competency-based curricula in higher education).
New developments include various companies (such as Basno) offering electronic platforms that keep track of digital badges earned, and former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan teaming up with the MacArthur Foundation to start HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition in 2011.
The three primary purposes of digital badges are nicely summarized: “to motivate learning, to map learner progress, and to signal completion” (p. 106).
One can easily imagine how a badging system could be applied in media programs: one badge for Dreamweaver, another for Adobe InDesign, another for Associated Press style, another for inverted pyramid, another for media analytics, and so on.
The book, which had 59 contributors besides the editors, starts off assuming that the reader does not know anything about the concept or practice of digital badging. Chapter 1 is about the history, Chapter 2 about how badges can only work with buy-in from throughout society, Chapter 3 argues that badging should be rigorous, and by Chapter 6, the book is covering how badges affect learning motivation. Chapter 8 is about designing courses specifically for digital badging. Chapters 12 to 15 are case studies about digital badges in K-12 education, followed by case studies about higher education (Chapters 16-20) and case studies about adult learners (Chapters 21-25).
This reviewer has never taught in K-12 schools and almost surely never will, but it was useful to compare and contrast use of digital badges at various educational levels via the case studies. There is very little overlap between chapters, which also makes the book more valuable and more interesting. But the case studies all are written about various institutions by scholars at those same institutions. So while the chapters are perhaps more comprehensive than they might otherwise be, they also are less objective. Many of the case studies ultimately are essentially long advertisements for both contributors’ own institutions and for digital badges generally. (Strangely, although 61 scholars contributed, every chapter has exactly the same writing style and specific language. Because 61 scholars do not all write alike, we can assume that Muilenburg and Berge have done a huge amount of editing and rewriting . . . and made the book—which sounds downright bureaucratic in parts—less interesting to read as a result.) Moreover, while many chapters concede various errors made and/or technology problems, no case study (or any other chapter, for that matter) concludes the digital badges are a bad idea.
Even if digital badges are a great idea (this reviewer tentatively thinks that, at least in theory, badges could work in university journalism and media programs, but not for students in humanities such as English literature, history, or philosophy), there still is that challenge of society-wide buy-in. For journalism, media, public relations, and so forth, students, perhaps Huffington Post would be on board to pay attention to a list of digital badges on a fresh graduate’s resume. But would KAKM-TV (Anchorage’s PBS affiliate), The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury, or a trade magazine such as Landscape Management (formerly Weeds, Trees & Turf) be on board? It seems unlikely. (In fact, I doubt that all media managers even know that university graduates with a BA in Communication did not necessarily take any journalism courses!) And if media-related employers don’t care about digital badges, why would or should professors or students?
Maybe digital badges will catch on; maybe they will go the way of so many other fads in U.S. education. In the meantime, this reviewer would finally like to read well-researched articles that are skeptical or dismissive of them.