Madison Magazine: Kathleen Radionoff was intrigued by technology used in game design and started thinking about how the concept of digital badges could be used to verify a student’s educational credentials. The standard measure for noncredit education is not a letter grade, but rather how many total hours a student sits in a classroom to complete a course.
4 comments:
I think the allure behind digital badges is the community and social media aspect. Once something can be shared on a social media platform, it immediately seems desirable to us because it becomes part of our digital identity. I think this is an example of our collective consciousness leaning toward a completely shareable society: we want to be able to share all our achievements with others. While the original idea behind badge-earning (such as in video games or chore charts) was to have a physical or digital representation of your own personal achievement to feel as if you have achieved something, now it has been adapted for our generation to mean a personal achievement that can be shared with everyone. This makes me think about the idea "if you didn't post about it, did it really happen?" that is so prevalent today. For example, when I hang out with friends I feel pressured to put something on snapchat because it's a casual but easily-accessible reminder to everyone I know that I achieved something. I think these digital badges work the same way: we feel pressured to do our work and complete the course because we know we'll be able to tell people at the end.
Honestly I wish we had this kind of reward system at Carnegie. I find myself sitting in the costume studio late at night questioning why I am there when most everybody else has gone home. Many of my peers are out getting husbands and having kids and I’m just sitting in a corner sewing. The motivation of improving my portfolio has faded with time and I now wish to be paid for my hard work, with money, for food. I feel like this kind of badge reward system would help keep me motivated through the last couple months of my education. I think for a lot of grad students this would be helpful. You are either having a hard time transitioning from making money for your work or, like me, are in your 7th year of college in a row. Motivation can be thin on the ground. This kind of reward system would maintain motivation but it could also help with further employment. Every grad school is different and the badges would help reflect how intense the program at CMU actually is.
The idea of creating a digital database to quantify and certify the training that individuals have received is wonderful and seems to be well overdue. It seems that the days of a sole paper copy being the definitive record of achievement is becoming increasingly outdated, not to mention easily counterfeited (between word editing software and other computer based visual editing platforms the capabilities are near limitless), and unreliable. My biggest qualm with the idea of ‘Virtual Badges’ is not the virtual part at all, it’s the ‘badge’ aspect. Badges, in this context, sound very elementary and silly. If a resume came across my desk and had things like ‘welding badge’ or ‘defensive driving badge’ or ‘scissor lift badge’ I can not imagine that I would take these things with much legitimacy. Children and adolescent groups get badges for participation in activities, this is not something I would associate with professionalism or a way to quantify career advancement skills.
The idea of digital badges to receive credit sound a little weird to me. When I began reading the article I thought this was a new system that was going to be implemented in elementary schools, as the idea of badges sounds a lot like a sticker you would give a child. Reading that it was at the college level surprised me. As innovative as this idea is, I do not think it is the right time or place. The school is going to be hurting its students if they want to transfer, how would another school look at digital badges and compare that to a credited course at another university? Appearing on professional social media would seem childish to me. Especially, when an employer who has not heard of the digital badges looks at your profile, it would be something that could set you at a disadvantage. Maybe further down the line this could a thing, but not now.
Post a Comment