Whom Will Digital Badges Empower? Sociological Perspectives on Digital Badges Michael R. Olneck University of Wisconsin - Madison 208 Education Building Madison, WI 53706 001-608-262-9967 olneck@education.wisc.edu ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION Advocates laud digital badges for empowering learners in “We choose a style of knowing and a kind of society new and valuable ways. Badges can, they claim, recognize jointly.” Ernest Gellner, Legitimation of Belief, 1974. and credential learning acquired outside the confines of formal schooling, are widely available and affordable, will In some ways, badges are truly phenomenal. From a appeal to employers for their granular measurement of what glimmer of an idea at the Mozilla Drumbeat Festival in individuals know and, more importantly, can do, are 2010, until now, the badge project has grown rapidly into modular and stackable, and offer individualized and an increasingly visible and important actor in the fields of personalized learning. Sociological theory and research, education and credentials. A Google search on “ ‘Digital however, offer grounds for caution in expecting Badges’ AND ‘Credentials’” for 2009 yields only 38 links. digital badges to empower learners in the ways badge For 2010, the same search yields 128 links. For 2012, it “evangelists” envision. In this presentation I will sketch yields 1,010 links, and for 2014, it yields 2,370 links. For constraints with which badge advocates may have to the first two months of this year, 743 links come up, contend. These constraints include how credentials operate compared to 351 for the same period last year. The Badge in labor markets and in the organization of work, the Summit in February, 2014 was heavily attended enduring power of conventional education forms, the (http://www.reconnectlearning.org/summit/); a cursory contradictory position of profit-making firms in the look at the Badge Alliance 2014 time line reveals an education field, the exclusion of “powerful knowledge” enormous amount of activity around badges from the learning outcomes afforded by badges, and the (http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/388116/ Open- congruence between badges and neo-liberalism. To Badges-in-2014/). While digital badges and micro- accomplish their vision of truly empowering learners, credentials are not universally familiar to the general badge advocates will have to find ways to overcome the public, they are a growing and accelerating reality. constraints I identify. Despite this unarguable success in a very short period, for reasons arising beyond the badge project itself, badges may Categories and Subject Descriptors very well prove less empowering than the early badge K.3.3.1 [Computers and Education]: Computer Uses in “evangelists” anticipated. Here, I offer four arguments that Education – Collaborative learning put into question the aspiration that badges will prove empowering. A connecting theme across these arguments is General Terms my contention that the features of badges that would enable Measurement, Documentation, Performance, Design, them to enhance meaningful learning and the features of Human Factors, Standardization, Theory. badges that would enable them to serve well as credentials are in conflict. In short, there is a contradiction between Keywords badges as facilitating and cultivating learning, and badges Open digital badges, empowerment and disempowerment, as widely circulated credentials. constraints, credentials. My four arguments are: 1. Badges emerging from strong, connected learning Copyright © by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted for communities will not be scalable, yet to be valuable, private and academic purposes. credentials must be widely recognized, interpretable, In: D. Hickey, J. Jovanovic, S. Lonn, J.E. Willis, III (eds.): comparable, and convertible. Proceedings of the Open Badges in Education (OBIE 2015) 2. The learning recognized by badges which become Workshop, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA, 16-Mar-2015, widely utilized credentials is unlikely to be “powerful published at http://ceur-ws.org. knowledge.” 3. Badges promote dis-empowering features of a neo- badges awarded by these programs will be easier for liberal economy and society. audiences, in particular, for employers, to interpret and 4. How credentials operate in labor markets is in tension compare. Moreover, standardization will make it with the ideal of badges being widely available. convenient to bring these kinds of badge programs to scale. By virtue of ease of interpretability, comparability, and 2. BADGES EMERGING FROM STRONG, scalability, badges from competence-based programs will CONNECTED LEARNING COMMUNITIES be more likely than badges from other kinds of programs to succeed as credentials. WILL NOT BE SCALABLE In the prospectus for a paper entitled “Transcending Moreover, there is a strong likelihood that because of Existing Motivation Paradigms to Unlock the Full Potential scalability, and, thus, marketability, standardized badge of Open Digital Badges,” Daniel Hickey and his co-authors programs, and the standardized content, instructional acknowledge that “digital badges have been eagerly materials, and assessment materials with which they are embraced by proponents of ‘competency-based’ education associated, will be the province of private firms acting as that focus narrowly on readily-measurable individual “education providers.” These firms are unlikely to offer competencies...” [1]. “But,” they go on to say, “equating badges and learning programs which require close open digital badges with competency-based education familiarity with the specific interests and goals of unique ignores a key finding in the [Design Principles learning communities, or which require engaged reflection, Documentation] project: most of the badge development experimentation, and creativity. To further gauge the efforts were as concerned with disciplinary social practices shortcomings of competency-based models of learning and as they were with specific individual competencies” [2]. knowing, consider the attributes of what the curriculum theorist and sociologist of education, Michael F. D. Young, The likely constraints on the effects of badges arise, in part, calls “powerful knowledge” [3]. because of the affinity and association between badges and competency-based education. I anticipate that badges associated with programs using, for example, Pearson’s 3. CONSTRAINTS IMPOSED BY LIKELY Acclaim platform,1 and the like, will more accurately EXCLUSION OF “POWERFUL foretell what kinds of badges will succeed as credentials KNOWLEDGE” FROM THE LEARNING than will the badge models studied by the DPD project. The OUTCOMES RECOGNIZED BY BADGES DPD models were the winners of the MacArthur THAT BECOME WIDELY UTILIZED Foundation funded 2012 DML competition, and were selected to embody principles the visionaries valued, as CREDENTIALS well as for their diversity, and they were incubated without “Powerful knowledge,” Young writes is knowledge which the need to reach and succeed in markets. “provides reliable and in a broad sense 'testable' explanations of ways of thinking; it is the basis for The visionaries who introduced badges are committed to suggesting realistic alternatives; it enables those who the idea of communities of engaged learners who acquire it to see beyond their everyday experience; it is participate in crafting both their own learning and the conceptual as well as based on evidence and experience; it badges that represent their learning. Theirs is a pluralistic is always open to challenge; it is acquired in specialist vision of empowered “teachers” and “learners,” where educational institutions, staffed by specialists; it is those terms are both broader than usually understood, and organized into domains with boundaries that are not not altogether distinct. But the badges crafted by such arbitrary and these domains are associated with specialist learning communities are unlikely to enjoy currency much communities such as subject and professional associations” beyond their communities of origin. Even if badges from [4]. Finally, powerful knowledge “is often but not always such communities are displayed in badge earners’ “digital discipline-based” [5]. Discipline-based knowledge is, backpacks,” they will be difficult for those outside the however, especially well-suited for cultivating powerful learning communities in which the badges originated to knowledge. interpret without substantial effort, and they will be difficult to compare with badges issued by other, equally This is because disciplinary knowledge provides the unique and relatively insular, learning communities. intellectual tools for learners to reflect upon, discern, and analyze the structuring principles underlying the surface While badges associated with competency-based learning knowledge they are acquiring. Its pedagogy requires programs will also face problems of interpretability and immersion and practice under the guidance of experts. comparability, the badges and the learning they signify will Powerful knowledge is not “delivered”; it is acquired by be relatively simple to standardize. By being standardized, engaged social learning. In today’s political climate in the United States academic knowledge is publicly dismissed as overly theoretical and abstract, too far removed from 1 http://home.pearsonvue.com/About-Pearson-VUE/Discover- application to be useful and worth the cost. Yet it is Pearson-VUE/ Pearson-VUE-businesses/Acclaim.aspx academic knowledge that has, as Leesa Wheelahan of the University of Toronto argues, “the potential to challenge “cut[ting] students off from forms of understanding that the social distribution of power because of its (not always might give them access to competing conceptions of the realised [sic]) capacity to transform knowledge and how appropriate character of professions and that knowledge is used” [6]. Students, Wheelahan writes, professionalism” [10]. “For this reason,” Beck “need to acquire the capacity to integrate knowledge (and continues, “and because this specific 'project' can be underpinning principles) through systems of meaning plausibly seen as part of a much wider set of policies bounded by the discipline in ways that transcend the designed to disempower relatively autonomous workers' particular application of specific 'products' of disciplinary organizations (professions and trade unions) whilst knowledge in specific contexts”[7]. Only in this fashion greatly empowering managerial cadres, these initiatives will students actually gain command of knowledge. Only in arguably amount to 'coercive de-professionalization' ...” this way will they be authentically empowered by what [11]. Under this regime, teachers are subjected to “a they have learned. It is not accidental that “powerful technical mode of control over expertise, and... a knowledge,” in this sense, has been, and continues to be, technician model for the role and status of the the “knowledge of the powerful,” while mundane practitioner” [12], that goes along with methods for knowledge is what is made available to others [8].2 monitoring work and assessing performance in our “audit culture” [13]. In contrast, Wheelahan writes, competence based “packages” exemplify “a very fragmented, atomistic and These methods of control forge a direct connection instrumental view of knowledge” [9]. By skills being between de-professionalization of teachers and the broken down into discrete components, and then being constricted horizons of the knowledge that I anticipate added together on the assumption that the total equals the badges associated with competence-based education will sum of the parts, learners do not come to understand represent. The “audit society” requires calculable relationships between elements, or how elements are outcomes on which to evaluate learners and their transformed when they are recontextualized in this form. instructors. It will be these outcomes that both learners They do not engage complexity, and therefore to do not and teachers will be constrained to produce, outcomes develop the capacities cultivated by engagement with which will be far from Young’s “powerful knowledge” “powerful knowledge.” Rather, competence-based and from the deep learning to which badge visionaries pedagogy is, in the view of the Cambridge education like Connie Yowell at the MacArthur Foundation, scholar, John Beck, likely to be “cognitively restricting.” Joanna Normoyle, formerly at the UC Davis Sustaining Agriculture & Food Systems program, or Daniel Hickey, Wheelahan and Beck may well neglect the possibilities for at Indiana University, are committed. competence-based to be implemented in ways which encourage the kind of engaged and deep learning favored by visionary badge enthusiasts. Nonetheless, Wheelahan 4. BADGES ARE ALIGNED WITH DIS- and Beck are likely to prove prescient in their EMPOWERING FEATURES OF A NEO- characterization of competence-based education programs LIBERAL ECONOMY AND SOCIETY which thrive in broad markets. In neo-liberal societies, social practices well outside Moreover, competence-based models used in professional traditional economic realms are organized on market training may prove disempowering by providing means to principles, and people’s consciousness, values, and regulate and de-professionalize those whose professional dispositions are shaped substantially by market relations. knowledge in the past endowed them with a measure of Such societies tend to be disempowering in ways which authority and autonomy. badges may exacerbate. These tendencies include the cultivation of competitive individualism aligned with Researchers in the UK who have looked, for example, at consumerist dispositions, the commodification of competence-based training for teachers have found that a education, and atomization of collectivities and erosion key change in teacher training associated with a of the bases of social solidarity. competency approach is that courses in education foundations, like those in philosophy and sociology, have 4.1 Individualism / Consumerism been jettisoned, “arguably,” according to Beck (2013), The vocabulary of empowerment among badge advocates emphatically places the individual badge earner at the symbolic center. Badges are said to 2 empower individuals to “guide their own learning,” There are those, however, who regard disciplinary knowledge “craft their own pathways,” and “self-direct their and thinking as constricting. Among them is the Director of the MIT Media Laboratory, Joi Ito (see Bull, 2014). The lifelong learning...” Badges are said to empower sociologist, Jerry Jacobs, defends the value of the disciplines for individuals to “take ownership of their learning...,” enabling rigorous thinking and cross-paradigmatic dialogue in “take credit for and manage their achievements In Defense of Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity and Specialization digitally,” and “take charge of their online identities and in the Research University (University of Chicago Press, 2013). reputations.” Badges empower learners to be the ultimate consumer because “you do not have to be a degree seeker, you can purchase one module and earn a sociologist of the curriculum, Basil Bernstein, writes, badge...” “divorced from persons, their commitments, their personal dedication, for these become impediments, In a number of respects, then, badges are well-suited to restrictions on flow, and introduce deformations in the constructing the ideal neo-liberal subject. Badges fit well working of the market...” [18]. The idea of the deep with processes of individuation, customization, and inwardness and otherness of knowledge, what Fred competition, as well as with an orientation toward Inglis calls “its pertinence to the deep structure of the consumption. Badges will extend market logic in that self,” is, Inglis claims, “being thinned out to the point of they are “client-friendly,” and are not a one-time fracture” [19]. acquisition, but can, and should, be “updated” as part of “life-long learning.” Insofar as the links between Commodification in education changes not only the education, training regimes, and labor markets in neo- nature of knowledge, but the ideal of the pedagogic liberal societies are based in individual choice, the relationship. Commodified education becomes a availability of badges in a postsecondary education commercial transaction, in which all parties invest less market of proliferating options, will prove a good fit. of themselves, and in which mutual commitments are diminished. The shift from commitment to contract, Badges will advance the neo-liberal discourse of more characteristic of lower tier institutions serving less “employability” [14]. Within this discourse, individuals advantaged students, empowers actors in fields beyond are responsible for continuously developing, education proper and further subordinates and maintaining, and communicating their “employability” disempowers academic institutions, while strengthening in the context of highly competitive job markets. As one organizations which dominate in the fields of commerce Pearson report observed “[t]he economic disruptions of [20]. While conventional education certainly entails the last two decades have made workers responsible for elements of commodification, what neo-liberalism does managing their own career development through is elevate this to a valued norm. learning that starts in secondary school and college but continues throughout their careers” [15]. In this context, workers “actively sell themselves to potential 4.3 Atomization employers” [16]. Badges are ideally suited to the Responding to a post by Daniel Hickey in his blog, “Re- requirement that individuals “sell” themselves on the mediating Assessment,” Nora Sabelli, the Director of the market. This is, in part, because they are, literally, for Center for Innovative Learning Technologies at SRI “display.” International, lamented that “we seem to be moving towards ... fostering the whole onus of education on the Superficially, the discourse from which I quoted above individual. Badges, whether well done or not, just add to bespeaks empowerment, but it is a constricted kind of the fractionalization (sic) [of] culture, unfortunately empowerment limited to fending for oneself in a world driven by technology” [21]. Similarly, Heather Chaplin, of intensified risk and vulnerability, and hoping that in a blog post at the MacArthur Foundation’s one’s digital presentation of self can lead to safe harbor. “Spotlight,” worried that the discussion around badges “replicates the obsession with personalization that is so 4.2 Commodification prevalent in online culture. There’s a lot of talk among It is now common to describe education as an Open Badges folks,” Chaplin wrote, “about ‘learners’ “industry,” and to refer to education “providers” or creating their own ‘pathways’ of learning... I ... worry “vendors” who “market” and “deliver” educational that we haven’t thought enough about what we’re losing “products” to their “customers.” Education increasingly by focusing so much on the individual... As we move takes the form of “goods for sale.” Both in discourse and toward customizing all aspects of our lives, do we risk in practice, education is more and more a commodity, losing the cohesiveness of being part of a whole?” [22]. and less an opportunity for intellectual and social Sabelli’s and Chaplin’s comments revive the “bowling flourishing. alone” theme popularized by Robert Putnam fifteen Commodified education is especially congruent with years ago [23]. That theme is concerned with alienation learning as skill and competency acquisition, which I and anomie arising from the lack of social support and earlier argued would fail to cultivate “powerful weakened social identities. While this is a kind of knowledge.” Furthermore, the commodification of disempowerment, I am more concerned here with the education displaces historic academic values of learning, weakening of collectivities, leaving individuals open to knowing, and knowledge that construe knowledge in exploitation by those with greater power. In this regard, more than instrumental terms. This is not a matter I worry that digital badges as workplace credentials may exactly of the distinction between “intrinsic” and well contribute to fractures in social organization, and to “extrinsic” motivation about which Hickey, Schenke, the development of a more heterogeneous, atomized and Tran write [17]. It is a matter of what knowledge is. workforce and labor pool, more susceptible to the When knowledge is commodified, it is, as the late control of employers. First, worker insecurity or “precarious employment” characteristics that make badges attractive - wide [24] is a feature of neo-liberal economies. Rather than availability, low cost, relative ease of acquisition - will provide long-term employment, firms are increasingly most likely diminish their value in credentials markets. assembling teams of workers according to the needs of temporary projects [25]. Insofar as badges index 5. CONCLUSION relatively narrow and specific competencies, they will Assuming the validity of the four arguments I have facilitate flexible, “just in time” assembling - and advanced, what implications follow? disassembling - of temporary teams of workers. As formulated, my first conclusion, that badges Second, while neo-marxists, like Bowles and Gintis [26], emerging from strong, connected learning communities have emphasized the role of formal educational will not be scalable, and so will not be valuable as credentials in constructing and legitimating workplace widely utilized credentials, obscures an important hierarchy, at the same time vertically-arranged formal distinction. The distinction is between badges as a form categories of education credentials have served to of credential, and arrays of specific badges. My institutionally link education with career stages [27], a argument pertains to arrays of specific badges, which model sometimes said to be dying out in the “new may include sets of badges meaningful only within economy.” Horizontally-differentiated badges will make bounded learning communities. However, for badges to it easier to erode the idea of career stages, and to become a recognized and accepted form of credential diminish employees’ expectations of enjoying staged does not require that all badges be commensurable, any advancement characterized by predictable increases in more than an Associates Degree in Liberal Studies needs rewards, authority, and autonomy. Improvements in to be commensurable with Master of Fine Arts in Studio position, in these circumstances, will be more for “degrees” to be an accepted form of credential. individualized, customized, and timed solely according to employers’ judgements of workers’ value. The same distinction pertains to my fourth conclusion that the value of credentials depends upon their scarcity, which is contradictory to the ideal of badges being 4.4 How Credentials Operate in Labor widely available. The scarcity to which I am referring is Markets the scarcity of particular credentials. The fact that high A fundamental value of the open badge movement is that school diplomas are of little value in substantially badges will democratize learning by recognizing more advancing the opportunities of large numbers of diverse kinds of learning than academic credentials individuals4 does not mean that academic credentials in recognize, by not costing as much in time and money to the form of diplomas and degrees are not widely useful acquire as conventional higher education, and by being as a form of credential. available in ways that permit learners at various stages and in various circumstances of life to become badge In short, my arguments here are premised on the earners . In short, the amount of recognized learning and unstated assumption that badges attain the status of a the number of badge earners will, in principle, be recognized form of credential. I did not address the unlimited. likelihood of that being the case, nor the determinants of that likelihood.5 One might even argue that what I But credential markets, unlike Christian grace and advanced as a criticism, namely that scalable, salvation, are, inherently, limiting. Educational marketable badge programs will be highly standardized, credentials, which include badges, are, in important can be seen as a virtue. Standardized badges, by being respects, positional goods [28]. This means that they more visible, more common, and less “irregular” or arrange individuals in hierarchical positions relative to “alternative,” may well advance the cause of securing one another. Credentials are, in their essence, badges as a form of credential, than may badges crafted classifications or categorizations of persons. They by more circumscribed learning communities. In represent distinctions or symbolic boundaries between securing a place for badges as a recognized form of those who hold a particular credential and those who do credential, standardized badge programs may contribute not. The value of a credential inheres in the degree of distinction it confers, the strength of the boundary it draws between those who hold the credential and those Thanks to Jeff Gran of Capella University for suggesting this who do not. The value of credentials, therefore, lies example. largely in their relative scarcity.3 The very 4 Holding a high school diploma is valuable as a “defensive necessity” in a universe in which high school diplomas are plentiful. The absence of a high school diploma relegates non- 3 graduates to extremely limited opportunities [33]. Moreover, There are examples of credentials which are plentiful and high school graduation is a prerequisite for entrance into a four- provide a valued benefit, e.g., drivers licenses. However, unlike year college. limited employment opportunities, the opportunity to drive a car 5 is, in principle, open to all with the proper qualifications. For an initial look at those questions see Olneck (2014). to the possibility for “niche” badge programs that more 7. REFERENCES closely adhere to the values of those who look to badges [1] Hickey, D, Schenke, K., and Tran, C. 2015. to guide, motivate, and recognize deep learning. Transcending existing motivation paradigms to As an institutional field, American education is highly unlock the full potential of open digital badges. differentiated, both vertically and horizontally, as are the Manuscript in preparation, 6. credentials which are awarded within the field [29]. We [2] Hickey, D, Schenke, K., and Tran, C. 2015. may expect that the range of badges issuers and the Transcending existing motivation paradigms to arrays of badges they issue will be similarly unlock the full potential of open digital badges. differentiated. 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