Notes and comments on ‘Digital Badges in Education’: Part I: Trends and Issues

Last month, a new book came out entitled Digital Badges in Education: Trends, Issues, and Cases. At over £30, it’s the most expensive book I’ve purchased for a while, but thought it would provide some useful insights. And no, there’s no chapter from me in it: I seem to remember a call for contributions going out last year but I don’t work for free / less than my minimum day rate.

Over my discours.es blog I’ve been making notes on each chapter as I read it. So far I’ve completed Part I: Trends and Issues. As you’d expect from an edited collection, it ranges from the average to the excellent. One curious omission is an introduction from the editors.

The links below reference the titles of each chapter in Part I of the book. However, when you click through, you’ll notice that I’ve given my blog posts a different name. These, of course, are my own notes, highlights, and (in some cases) criticisms of the authors’ work.

Part I: Trends and Issues

1. History and Context of Open Digital Badges by Sheryl L. Grant
2. Badges and Competencies: New Currency for Professional Credentials by Anne Derryberry, Deborah Everhart, and Erin Knight
3. The Case for Rigor in Open Badges by Richard E. West and Daniel L. Randall
4. Competency-Based Education and the Relationship to Digital Badges by Rhonda D. Blackburn, Stella C.S. Porto, and Jacklyn J. Thompson
5. Good Badges, Evil Badges? The Impact of Badge Design on Learning from Games by Melissa L. Biles and Jan L. Plass
6. The Impact of Badges on Motivation to Learn by Samuel Abramovich and Peter S. Wardrip
7. What Video Games Can Teach Us About Badges and Pathways by Lucas Blair
8. Instructional Design Considerations for Digital Badges by Chris Gamrat, Brett Bixler and Victoria Raish
9. Badging as Micro-Credentialing in Formal Education and Informal Education by Kyle Peck, Kyle Bowen, Emily Rimland and Jamie Oberdick
10. Digital Badges, Learning at Scale, and Big Data by Barton K. Pursel, Chris Stubbs, Gi Woong Choi, and Phil Tietjen
11. In the Eye of the Beholder: The Value of Digital Badges by Zane L. Berge and Lin Y. Muilenburg

I hope you find this useful! I’ll work on Part II next week.