Creating Badges

Some tips on creating Quality Badge Challenges

As we help students develop their life-ready skills and learner attributes in the classroom, we want to make sure that we are allowing our students to earn Digital Badges for high quality work. Here are some guiding questions that you can ask yourself to ensure that all Badges you issue to your students are of the highest quality.

• Does this Badge provide rigor for our students?
• Can the student demonstrate this skill independently?
• Has the student had multiple opportunities to show this skill?
• Is the Badge evidence based?
• Is the Badge transferable?
• Is the Badge based on a small/granular skill?

References:

1. Epstein School Report - Recommendations based on their efforts with Digital Badging
2. McArthur - Studied 20 badging pilots and gave recommendations based on the functions of the badge system
3. Research - Collection of case studies and research on badging

Purpose: What is your badge seeking to acknowledge or address? Briefly describe the purpose of the badge.

Description: How can the badge be explained in a simple, clear way? Consider writing a tweet-length or slightly longer description; work to distinguish each badge from other badges. Bonus: short descriptions are effective social media messaging tools.

Criteria: What does someone need to do in order to earn this badge? What are the required steps? In your description, indicate how this is meaningful to your organization and to the earner. Pay special attention to this content: it's what a badge consumer and the badge earner will see when they click on the badge.

Evidence: Are your badges artifact driven? If so, what is the evidence required by the criteria and where will the evidence reside? How long will it be kept?

Assessment type: How will the work be assessed? Some examples include Expert, Peer, Self, Algorithmic, etc. Can also include summative, formative, etc. Are there associated rubrics?

Minimum requirements: Are there minimum requirements for the badge? Do prerequisites exist? Does an earner need to earn other badges prior to this one?

Time to Earn: How long will it take someone to earn this badge? As you build out your system, you may find that length of time to earn plays a major role in your system design.

Levels: Does this badge have levels? For example, Videographer level 1, Videographer level 2, Videographer level 3, etc. If so, how do they work?

Cumulative Toward: Does this badge accumulate toward other badges? Does one badge build upon or multiply another? For example, earning Videographer levels 1-3 earns you the Video Pro badge. Indicate the badge(s) to which your badge accumulates here.

Standards Alignment: Does the badge align with any standards, e.g., learning standards, professional standards, state standards, etc.?