Thursday, November 08, 2012
Show Me Your Badge
NYTimes.com: AT the end of “Fundamentals of Atomic Force Microscopy,” a short online course offered by Purdue University, students who score at least 60 percent on the final exam will receive an e-mail with a file attached. It will contain a picture of a blue-and-white circle, roughly one inch in diameter, embossed with the stylized image of an atomic force microscope bouncing a laser beam off a cantilever into a photodiode, which is how scientists take photographs and measure the size of very small (nanoscale) things.
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2 comments:
If this takes off it will influence a lot about the way we gain/present our credentials. However, I'm a bit skeptical that badges will ever become prolific; I suspect they'll end up in a virtual graveyard with all the other discarded bits of technology from the past few decades.
What's troubling about this system is that it wold require that everyone seeking education or employment to be "plugged in," as it were. I love the internet and I enjoy the time I spend on it - both for the sake of pleasure and learning - but I enjoy knowing that if I ever want to disconnect, I can. I don't like to imagine a world where one's education would mandate an online presence.
Mr. Carey seems to accept on face value the assumption, that I think is inherent in the badge system of education, that the desire to acquire a badge is tantamount to the desire to acquire the knowledge the badge illustrates. Similar to systems that rely on grades to quantify how well someone has learned a subject, the attainment of a badge in a discipline is a singular event, and in the case of Purdue's course in Atomic Force Microscopy, requires barely passing an exam. In my opinion actual knowledge is an ongoing process that cannot be quantified and has little to do with passing exams. I have never been an educator, per se, but I have had the pleasure of passing on to dozens of interns and colleagues through the years a little bit of what I know, or think I know, about building and designing. Looking back at those experiences, the best ones were always those when teaching was a collaboration instead of another part of the job. Had I a badge to give (I sense a laser printer job coming on), I would not be inclined to give them to those who cut the tightest joint or laid down the prettiest bead, but to those who worked the hardest, no matter the outcome, who approached the work of learning with the same ethic and hunger that makes a great collaborator.
In the future I hope to be in a position to hire capable and qualified people to work with. If and when I do, I hope I will have the presence of mind and level of awareness to see beyond grades or badges or diplomas, and instead find that combination of hunger and humility that ignorance cannot abide, and in my world, has always marked the people with whom I most want to work.
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