In this paper, we investigate how a digital badging system was used as part of an informal, not-for-credit professional development project. Teacher Learning Journeys was designed for personalized science learning for educators in K-12 schools, museums, universities, and teaching colleges through employing two levels of micro-credentials: lower achievement digital stamps and higher achievement digital badges. Researchers conducted a qualitative collective case study centered on 36 teachers; the primary data were records from learners' interactions within the digital badge system; secondary data came from a survey at the end of the experience and two interviews with 11 focal teachers. Findings suggest the following design principles: (a) two levels of assessment can support personalized learning, (b) mastery of learning can be demonstrated and assessed through reflective logs, (c) collaboration during and after badging activities can provide value to the learners, and (d) establishment of relevance of badging experiences can support the application of content outside the badging system.
Digital badges have been used in social media and online
games in five key areas identified by Antin and Churchill
[
While many types of educational institutions are adopting digital badges, empirical research studies (qualitative, quantitative, or design-based investigations) into how digital badges (and now Open Badges) support learning have only recently been published. Because the research is new, themes on the role of digital and Open Badges in education are emerging.
Through an analysis of 30 badging projects funded by the
Badges for Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition
(funded by the MacArthur Foundation) Hickey et al. [
In research with 51 middle school pupils (seventh and
eighth grade) who were learning science, technology,
engineering, and math (STEM), Abramovich, Schunn, and
Higashi [
From their study, Abramovich et al. make two recommendations to the design of badging systems. First, they suggest that to maintain high levels of learner motivation badging system designers include few participation-only badges and have many skill-oriented digital badges available. Second, based on an analysis of survey data, Abramovich et al. suggest the provision of instructions on the criteria needed to earn a badge will also assist to keep motivation high.
While much of the research has occurred within STEM
learning environments, not all badges are focused on
STEM content. For instance, from their case study of
badges to support self-regulation in an online STEM
course, Cucchiara and colleagues [
Within the broader landscape of technology-enhanced
learning research, our research interests are aligned to
badges as pedagogical tools. Our perspective is that badges
can support learning and act as markers that learning has
happened. The recognition that learning has happened is
important not only for learners, but also for their teachers
and mentors, and their peers in the same learning
environment [
Hickey et al. [
Our project’s overarching research goal is to examine
learners’ badge-earning pathways in order to refine
learning theory about how the things that learners learn in
one setting can be applied to another consequential setting
via computer tools. For example, our team’s prior work has
examined the role of: digital photography in supporting
learning across settings [
TLJ was created to support teacher professional development (PD) in STEM subjects for K-12 education in the United States. Teachers accessed the TLJ system to engage in STEM learning at their own pace and to meet their own identified needs and a level of depth that reflected the needs of the pupils in their classrooms.
In the first year of the TLJ system’s operation that is presented here, educational badging options included 54 activities related to three areas of science and engineering: solar system (19 badging activities), weather and climate (20 badging activities), and engineering (16 badging activities). The teachers earned badges by reflecting on activities that they participated in; these badging activities covered a wide-range of PD activities. PD activities used in our badging program included synchronous webinars, asynchronous discussion boards, educational media and texts, archived online presentations by scientists, engineers, and education experts. Figure 1 shows one of the 20 badging activities in the Weather & Climate library.
Teachers were introduced to the system through an instructional video created by the principal investigator of the project. This video elaborated on badges and each of the functions available. Also, teachers were invited to use as many of the available badging PD resources as they wanted.
The TLJ badging system was developed utilizing a travel metaphor. TLJ helped teachers to set their unique learning goals for their badging journey, find relevant badging activities to support their goals, compose a log of their experience for the activity that could be submitted to earn badges, receive feedback from an expert as they continued their journey, and store all of their badges (accomplishments) in display pages styled to be similar to that of the stamp inside of a passport.
A teacher started their learning journey by creating a TLJ
account and writing a goal statement. While optional, the
goal statement was used to meet goal-setting needs by
helping the teacher to begin to articulate a learning pathway
[
The teacher then could initiate any PD badging activity from their itinerary by attending a webinar or engaging in other educational activities. In TLJ, no credit was available just for participation; the ideas had to be applied to the teacher’s educational setting. The teacher then chose to submit their materials to earn a stamp or a badge, as described in Section 2.3. A National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) education expert was assigned as a mentor to the teacher based on the content area of the badge. The mentor provided written feedback to the teacher, which resulted in the (a) earning of a badge or a stamp or (b) additional activities to be completed. The feedback was stored in the system as part of the metadata associated with their engagement with a particular activity and could be accessed by the teacher, the mentor, and the researchers. Then, the teacher’s itinerary would change to show that the badge was earned.
After earning a badge or stamp, the teacher would have the option to anonymously fill out a survey on the activity, which gave the research and development team valuable feedback. The teacher would also be able to view the status of their badges and stamps in portfolio pages for the earned achievements. Additionally, any badges or stamps that were being reviewed by mentors were also displayed with the text pending superimposed on the badge image. The teacher could also review their work in the log section. This feature of TLJ acted as a blog-style page that captured each entry the teacher made for the activities completed as well as any additional evidence they uploaded for review by a mentor or that they wanted to be included in their badging portfolio.
An important feature of the TLJ badges was that they were
leveled [
To illustrate the difference between badges and stamps, the PD badging activity, Scale Models: The Earth-Moon System in the Solar System is a good example. This Scale Models activity has three options for teachers: (1) the entry-level activity is earning a TLJ stamp (Figure 2 left); teachers attend the webinar and write one brief reflective post, (2) a higher level of mastery means earning a TLJ badge (Figure 2 right), teachers also attend the webinar but they write a full lesson plan on incorporating the content into classroom activity, or (3), teachers can earn both the TLJ stamp and badge for this Scale Models activity by meeting both the stamp and badge criteria. To make the stamp and badges visually distinct, the stamp was given a design akin to a passport office rubber stamp and the badge an embroidered patch as shown in Figure 2.
To support our analytical work, our theoretical framework
considers bringing together the concept of cultural tools
from sociocultural theory [
Vygotsky’s [
Our TLJ research and development was guided by a
framework for mobile learning [
In the Kearney et al. model [
With the emphasis of socio-cultural considerations,
cooperative, communicative, and collaborative efforts to
support meaning-making are included as a dimension in the
Kearney et al. [
Personalization is a dimension of mobile learning that
allows for learner-centered education because learners can
customize many factors related to their learning. Kearney et
al. [
The purpose of this paper is to understand the learners’
experiences with and through TLJ. We seek to use learner
badging artifacts and interviews to understand how the TLJ
teachers interacted with elements of a digital badging
system including the goal statements, logs, materials
submitted to earn a stamp or badge, and their mentor.
Hickey and team [
Teachers were recruited from partnering organizations, with the assistance of the National Science Teachers Association and NASA, via listservs and emails. Teachers at all levels in all kinds of educational institutions were invited to participate in this professional development experience. Teachers were not compensated for participating. All teachers who expressed interest were accepted in the study, but only the 36 teachers who earned at least one stamp or badge in year one were included in this analysis. The majority of research participants were at the elementary or middle school levels—with nearly a third in each category of 0–5 years, 6–15 years, and more than 15 years of work experience. The research participants came from the United States but with the majority in the eastern and central US regions.
Four different types of data were collected during year one: (a) the 36 participants’ stamp and badge logs and goal setting statements (n=183 user-generated documents, including stamp and badge logs and goal statements), (b) online year one evaluation survey (n=29, 80.5% of total), (c) online activity evaluation surveys for each complete badge or stamp activity (n=76), and (d) pre- and postinterviews with 11 preselected teachers. These data types are described in-depth below.
The system logs captured all user-generated documents. The system logs also captured when a teacher added a badging activity to their itinerary and the recognition (stamp, badge, or both) that they received for it.
A 13 question electronic survey was sent out as a summative evaluation at the end of year one to the 36 participants. The response rate was 80.5%. The survey captured opinions on the overall experience with TLJ as well as possible future improvements. The activity evaluation surveys were made available upon completion of any badging activities. The activity surveys were intended to understand the perceptions of value and quality of the individual activities and to determine if any activities needed significant revision for year two of TLJ.
For the interviews, 11 teachers were strategically selected by the categories shown in Table 1. The pre- and postinterviews were conducted over the phone. Each interview lasted 45 minutes to one hour. The questions were focused on perceptions of TLJ and other experiences with features of the badging environment and included: “Did you find value in setting a purpose statement for your learning journey?” “Did you find the itinerary an easy way to keep track of your professional development activities? and “Did you find value in the feedback you received from the education specialists that reviewed your badging logs?”
The research team designed a strategic case study [
The team conducted an analysis of the TLJ experiences of the 36 teachers that participated within the year one implementation, which was run from June to August 2012. Our analysis focuses on understanding learners’ experiences within the TLJ badging system and how these experiences could be useful to interactions outside the The analytical process began by iteratively reading the records of 11 teachers who participated in the interviews. We made this choice because we had data from outside the TLJ system about their interests in badging, the STEM content and their workplace conditions. The interviews focused on the teachers’ experiences earning digital badges and stamps, using the online badging system to support learning, and how the overall TLJ experience connected to their educational institution.
As we read the 11 teachers’ goal setting statements, badge activity logs, and interview transcripts, we applied codes for personalization, collaboration, and authenticity. First, the coded excerpts were examined within each case (e.g., one teacher’s experiences). Second, the coded segments were compared and contrasted within an Excel spreadsheet to understand patterns within the badging experience of the 11 focal teachers. We used the analysis of the 11 teachers to strengthen our coding book and to develop preliminary analytical insights before moving to the third step of the analysis. In the third analysis step, we examined the logs from earning badges and stamps and goal statements from all participating 36 teachers. By looking at the full dataset, we were then able to find examples and counter examples of our themes. We then turned to the activity surveys and summative surveys to compare the trends from the teachers’ logs and reflections to survey responses. Throughout the analysis process, we relied most heavily on the badging activity logs and the goal setting reflections. However, the interview data and survey responses allowed us to triangulate our findings and to ensure we understood the teachers’ experiences from their perspectives.
In this section, we answer our research question about the kinds of interactions learners had with the elements of the TLJ badging system. Overall, the learners, who in this study are teachers, reported an estimated average of 13.4 hours (range 2 to 40 hours) of engagement with TLJ activities during the summer. We first describe the way that the full group of 36 teachers used TLJ’s various components, with explanatory details from the 11 interview participants, especially the focal case study educators: Barbara and Sally.
Each participant’s journey began with writing a personal
learning goal statement, which allowed support for teachers
in their personalized learning experience. In particular, it
helped in identifying the badged activities they would want
to complete over the summer and add them to a personal
itinerary. As Table 2 shows, learners identified over half of
the activities that they wanted to complete at the start of the
experience, yet completed very few. Across the 36
teachers, 221 activities were picked during the first few
weeks of the program, but only 11 were completed. Time at
the beginning was spent exploring and planning for the
options within the badging system, rather than earning
stamps or badges. This supports the motivating learning
principle to set goals described by Hickey and colleagues
[
During their post-interview, both Sally and Barbara commented that they saw value in setting purpose statements because it helped them think critically about the PD they needed in order to meet their personal goals. By examining Barbara and Sally’s goals, selections, and completed PD, we found that their focus was narrow when compared to other teachers that completed at least one stamp. From these findings, we can tell that support may be needed to help teachers in identifying focused and manageable learning goals.
Personalization was also clear when analyzing the topics
that learners selected. Our earlier work found that teachers
most often sought the entry-level stamp as
microcredential, rather than a badge [
Personalization was not just in the topic area but in the approach to PD. Barbara and Sally each worked exclusively on one topic. Barbara worked on solar system activities and began by exploring PD related to a general understanding of planets, next focused specifically on Mercury for three activities, and then returned to more general solar system PD again. Sally chose only weather and climate activities. Her selection was similar to Barbara’s where she would vary her content focus. Sally chose PD activities with a fairly consistent alternating pattern between weather and climate content. Sally reported she was initially not enthusiastic about teaching weather and climate science in class, but she felt strongly about finding activities within the TLJ that would energize her and support her to feel more prepared to work with her middle school classes. Barbara also expressed interest in finding solar system PD activities in order to help her prepare for her lessons in the upcoming school year.
To earn a badge or a stamp, teachers had to write and submit an activity log. The teachers’ activity logs consisted of their explanations of how, when, and where the TLJ badging STEM materials will be used to enhance pupils’ learning in their university, school, or museum. For these teachers, the TLJ content not only filled a gap in STEM resources as discussed above, but TLJ activities were used to transform current teaching practices. Teachers discussed how the TLJ material could be used to meet specific needs of their pupils. Nancy earned six Solar System stamps and one Weather & Climate stamp. In her activity logs, she wrote about the unique learning needs of individual pupils and used TLJ resources to help those diverse pupils enjoy interactive activities. For example, Nancy commented, “[TLJ] helped me absorb the information….If it was useful for me, then it would be useful for learners in classroom environments.” Nancy, like many other teachers in our dataset, was not only looking for quality content in the badging activities for her own learning, but in her activity log, she carefully considered how the delivery and activities of the STEM content would work in the diversity of her class.
Erin was one of the most robust TLJ users; she completed eight Engineering stamps; four Engineering badges, two Weather & Climate stamps, one Weather & Climate badge, and one Solar System stamp. In her activity logs, Erin described how she could supplement the TLJ materials to bridge the gap for pupils who had little exposure to the content or to challenge more advanced pupils. To earn her seven stamps, Nancy wrote in her activity logs how she would adapt the TLJ content for the younger elementary pupils in her classroom. Specifically, Nancy developed lesson plans that incorporated the detailed NASA images and simulations in her teaching. Nancy also reflected on how she would use the materials from the badging system to engage her pupils more fully in the STEM content. She wrote, “students who are not highly motivated in science or mathematics and students who are not challenged enough through the use of engineering processes would enjoy the interactive activities if they are implemented and facilitated effectively.” Through the TLJ activity logs, the teachers often wrote about the topic of inclusion and of a student-centered approach. Zoe described herself as a learner who enjoys hands-on and visually rich instruction in her logs. Zoe completed two Solar System stamps. In her log, she wrote that she liked “how all the activities presented are hands-on and visual to reach a variety of learners. If the students are able to see it and manipulate it they are more likely to learn it.” Barbara wrote that an activity was just “okay” for her, but then after trying to “put myself in my 6th grade students’ shoes and see how they would respond,” she concluded that with the help of some supplemental the activity would be “a great listening activity.” Lily used her logs to reflect on how she would use projects and classroom discussions in her upcoming school year. Lily wrote logs to earn one Solar System stamp, two Engineering stamps, three Weather & Climate stamps, and one Weather & Climate badge. She intended to use the information that she learned within the badging system to provide opportunities for her pupils to discuss in class other topics, such as climate change and land formations.
In order for a teacher to receive recognition for completing a PD activity, a reflective log was submitted for review. These required logs for completed PD also provided an opportunity to make professional learning an authentic learning experience. Sally made use of her reflections as write up for other colleagues in order to share the resources she found. Barbara reiterated the value of the reflections as a reminder for what worked and what did not for her class. Both Sally and Barbara made use of the logs to make direct applications to their own teaching.
The NASA education experts within TLJ that acted as
mentors frequently provided feedback to learners related to
the submitted logs for the badging activities. This feedback
often included suggestions related to the topic, common
STEM misconceptions they or their pupils may face, and
pedagogical approaches appropriate to the STEM content
presented. Barbara described her experience with the
feedback as offering “really great suggestions.” This
dedicated support from these expert educators supports
TLJ’s effort to enhance the credibility of the badging
activities with experts employed [
Discussions were supported through the use of TLJ
webinars, which allowed the teachers to communicate with
other teachers and with teacher educators. This
communication was short-duration (1–1.5 hours) and done
over an internal chat program that was available to all
participants. However, it still provided benefits for teachers
that did not know each other prior to the webinar. For
example, in her post-interview Barbara describes her
interest in having the opportunity to discuss what might
work in their classrooms as evidenced by forming teacher
cohorts in order to provide an on-going channel for the
exchange of dialogue and artifacts such as lesson plans,
student collected data, and feedback. Cohorts within TLJ
could provide teachers with long-term opportunities for
discussion and collaboration. Long-term benefits for
teachers could include a chance for sharing successes,
identifying ways to improve, and developing shared lesson
plans. Short discussions provided benefits for teachers as
well, such as learning how each teacher approached a
lesson differently, but could also lead into a longer term
engagement. For example, in one of her logs Erin writes
about attending an engineering webinar, describing how
each teacher took a turn in discussing the activity, and then
how she later connected with some of these teachers
through another online resource for STEM educators.
While the full TLJ analysis of the 36 teachers showed
evidence that all the teachers valued the collaboration.
When surveyed about future social and collaborative
functionality for TLJ, 67% of the survey participants —the
second most popular response—agreed with the statement:
“I would like to be part of a cohort of teachers similar to
me that I could work within online workshops and other
activities.” More specifically, the cases of Barbara and
Sally illustrate the nuance in the existing opportunities to
collaborate via synchronous or asynchronous conversations
with other teachers. For example, Sally stated that while
she did participate in discussions, she was equally happy
being an observer of the other teachers’ exchanges. When
asked about future collaborative opportunities, both
teachers wanted more opportunities to engage in
discussions like those in the webinars. Barbara further
elaborated that she would like to continue the PD activity
discussion later with others that completed the activity in
order to share what worked and did not work when trying
to implement the lesson. While the analysis of data only
demonstrates relatively short duration collaboration, future
iterations of TLJ would benefit from badges designed to
support opportunities for peer modeling similar to that
made available in the work of Ching and Hursh [
While designed to support both asynchronous, independent
learners, as well as groups of learners, these findings
further support Hickey and colleagues’ recommendation to
promote collaboration [
The PD that TLJ provided allowed for personalization that resulted in reports of relevance and authentic practice. Teachers were given the opportunity to submit feedback for each completed activity and among the 76 responses, 96% either agreed or strongly agreed to the statement “this activity is relevant to my teaching.” Across all the teachers’ responses to the post-survey, 93% agreed that the TLJ experience influenced their teaching for the upcoming school year. In addition to the PD content, the activities were also structured to require a reflection where teachers in some way consider how they might apply what they have learned back to their classroom.
Within the case study analysis, Sally explained she was
able to find relevance with TLJ by being able to “hunt and
choose” among all the PD activities to find what best meets
her needs as a middle school teacher. While Barbara shared
the resources she found with her partner teacher to make
use of them in their lesson plans. Since starting to share
these resources, Barbara moved closer to making her TLJ
experiences situated within her district’s teaching
community. In addition to engaging smaller professional
communities, such as the school and district level, the
teachers in our study contributed to an educator online
learning community that was supported by TLJ and can
help to promote exchange between teachers from all across
the country. Through itineraries and logs, teachers are able
to map their own learning trajectories [
For the teachers in our study, the earning of the actual stamps and badges was secondary to the learning of the STEM content area. For example, Barbara and Sally described the stamps and badges as “nice” but “not necessary” respectively. These two teachers were interested in the content for their own personal goals, as well as professional goals. Barbara wrote: “the big value is in the activities themselves.” This finding demonstrates that the value of these awards of completion is currently not evident to the general educational community. Both collegial and competitive benefits can be gained from improving a teacher’s ability to showcase their accomplishments and in the future, researchers and educators working on badging need to make the value of badging clearer to school districts, employers, policymakers and other opinion leaders. However, the overall opinion of badges and stamps was favorable as evidenced in the post-survey (Figure 4). When asked to select as many of the following forms or recognition you would like to receive for recognition of your work in TLJ, teachers ranked badges and stamps as highly as continuing education credits (CEUs) and below printable portfolios and letters of recognition. In this regard, future redesigns of TLJ may include a portfolio with stamps, badges, and details describing the learning goals of the PD. Portfolios like this can then be shared with colleagues, administrators, parents of the children in their classroom, or even friends and family who are interested in STEM topics.
This analysis focused on the experiences of 36 teachers in
TLJ in regard to how TLJ badges and badging system
served as a cultural tool to support STEM learning in
relation to dimensions of personalization, collaboration,
and authenticity (i.e., relevance). Our project was oriented
to understanding learners’ badge-earning trajectories as a
lens into (a) the refinement of mobile learning theory that
aims to support learners’ reflective activities and
selfexpressed goals and (b) the development of
technologyenhanced learning practice through the distillation of
design principles applicable to badge issuers in improving
their educational programming and instructional design
decisions. To reflect our goal, this final section is divided
into three parts. The first subsection reflects on how the
activities supported or did not support learners’ reflection
and personal or professional goals obtainment. The second
subsection considers methodological implications for
studying learning with and of badges. The final section
returns to our orienting design principles [
From our analysis of interviews, summative interviews, and badging activity logs, TLJ teachers found themselves in decision-maker roles to personalize their STEM learning. TLJ teachers first selected their learning goals and then they identified personally applicable badging activities that they believed best met their own goals. By providing options to the teachers, the TLJ educators explored STEM content at depths and breadths that matched their individualized expertise, teaching experience, and classroom needs. For our interviews and activity logs, we know that this is important to not only their professional learning but to their personal satisfaction with the TLJ badging program. All the teachers wrote that they found benefits in making choices to personalize their STEM learning. Many wrote or spoke in their interviews that they found the direct application of TLJ materials to their classrooms and customization of the activities through TLJ logs meaningful parts of the badging experience. The importance of making connections from the badging materials to their own learning and that of their pupils was especially compelling in the excerpts from Sally’s and Barbara’s interviews and logs. Collaboration was a key aspect of the TLJ badging system because the teachers shared experiences and education resources with other TLJ teachers, teachers in their educational institutions, and even the pupils and parents that they served. The logs and interview data showed that TLJ provided opportunities for teacher dialog that was relevant to their work environments. Importantly, our data showed that the badging activities allowed the TLJ teachers to share lesson plans in relation to how the engineering, solar system, and weather and climate content could be made relevant to the lives of youth.
As part of our research with badges [
We also found the following data was missing that would have helped our work. During year one of TLJ, we did not collect the feedback from the mentors. This could have helped the research team to better understand how and if teachers were taking this feedback into account in badges completed afterward. Moreover, this study would also have benefited from the collection of data related to collaborative engagement between the learners and the experts and among learners while engaging in more synchronous webinar badge activities, including capturing chat logs and other forms of communication between teachers. This would have helped the research team to explore how learners supported the learning of their peers through a more in-depth focus on collaboration and the role of conversations to support learning.
While we had a relatively small dataset of 36 teachers, our work is suggestive of several design principles for digital badges that can be refined through future data collection and analysis. First, the teachers in our full sample (and 11 focal teachers) personalized their badging experience in two key ways: selecting specific badging activities and then choosing an appropriate level of assessment (stamps, badges, or both) for their own expertise, goals, and classroom needs. This aspect of the design was highly valued by our research participants across multiple data sources. In order to support additional personalization in future iterations, we will continue to use goal-setting purpose statements in the initial goal-setting section of our work as well as at least two levels of assessment. Our findings from some teachers suggest that goal setting could be improved by providing examples to help guide the initial creation of goals that are attainable, specific, and focused and possibly by encouraging teachers to rework their goal statement after a certain number of badges were earned. As shown in Table 2, the teachers selected many more activities than they could have completed in the time that they allotted for themselves over the summer. Also, the teachers selected many more activities than they could have completed in the time that they allotted for themselves over the summer. To address this finding, rather than asking learners to rework their goal-setting statements after a certain number of badges are obtained, the system could be designed to automatically send out reminders asking learners to revisit their set goals at specific periods. Given that many teachers, including Sally and Barbara, expressed interest in collaborating with others as they earned badges, more long-term collaborative opportunities can be designed into the content in our next design iteration. For instance, creating cohorts or other groupings could provide people with the ability to discuss their badging learning experiences. This cohort model would allow learners to exchange information such as data collected by their classroom and pedagogical approaches that have worked in a particular lesson. These cohorts could be set at the start of the experience or after so many badges are earned to create groupings of people with similar STEM content experiences. These collaborations might also be supported by using the TLJ system to allow teachers to create their own groupings or to match geographically located teachers together.
Finally, the logs were identified by most teachers as helpful to connect the STEM learning within the badging system to their educational institution. This suggests there may be benefits from incorporating even more supportive structures into the badging system related to the activity logging required to earn a stamp or badge. For example, within the collaborative PD webinars, reflective questions were posed to all the teachers to support their engagement in the PD activities. Given the success and the popularity of these prompts, this structure could be repeated by TLJ in other aspects of the design. For instance, specific questions could be asked as part of the reflection logs that were required to be submitted to earn a stamp. More clearly incorporating specific prompts and supporting framework into the structure of each badge or stamp activity, we posit, could help to support teachers to reflect on certain aspects of their learning or future use of what they have learned thus making their experience more authentic. Being able to focus on a few parts of their learning may help to provide an even more favorable experience with required reflections by all teachers.
In this paper, we explored the utility of combining perspectives on technology-enhanced learning, cultural tools, and mobile learning frameworks to design and study digital badges with K-12 teachers. From our analysis of the experiences of the teachers that participated in the project’s first year, we suggest that future badging systems collect multiple forms of feedback (or data) from participants to support meaningful understanding of the badging system. We also found that including choices in the types of content, the types of assessment, and the pathway sought was important to our participants in terms of acknowledging their expertise, interests, and classroom needs. These finding support the following design principles: (a) two levels of assessment (i.e., stamps and badges) can support personalized learning, (b) mastery of learning can be demonstrated and assessed through reflective logs completed to earn a badge or stamp, (c) collaboration during and after badging activities (with colleagues within the badging system and outside of it) can provide value to the learners, and (d) establishment of relevance of badging experiences to professional practice can support the application of content outside the badging system after the recognitions are earned.
The development of the TLJ system and this research project were partially supported by the NASA Aerospace Education Services Project and Penn State University’s Center for Online Innovation in Learning. The authors express appreciation to the participating teachers for participating in our research project. We acknowledge team members Kyle Peck and Jaclyn Dudek for their contribution to the development of the TLJ system and for their scholarly conversations about badges as pedagogical tools.