Supporting Educators' STEM Learning Within a Personalized Badging System

• In Event: Democratizing Learning Through Digital Badges: Theoretical and Analytical Frameworks to Advance Design and Research

Abstract

Purpose and Theory
This research investigates how teachers used an online digital badge system to support personalized learning (Kearney, Schuck, Burden, & Aubusson, 2012) in an educator-centered professional development project. Teachers engaged with a badge system designed with a tiered level of badges offered as micro-credentials (i.e., a hierarchical system of recognition). Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory (1978) supports badge use by considering badges as cultural tools, which can mediate meaning-making for learners and act as boundary objects between work and professional development activities.

Data and Methods
Data collected includes learners’ badging interactions (n=71 teachers) within two iterations of the system as well as teacher interviews, end-of-activity surveys, and log reports from the badging portal. Our analysis focused on teachers’ use of digital badges to document their learning experiences. Analytical techniques included frequency counts of learners’ badging activities and survey responses; (b) open-ended, emergent coding of decisions teachers made; and (c) a theory-driving coding of how teachers personalized (Kearney, et al, 2012) their interactions to support their own interests in science subjects, their science teaching, and the needs of their students.

Results
Overall, project findings illuminate how badging can provide teachers with epistemic agency and choice related to content depth, content breadth, and assessment can make learning relevant. Across the two years, we found that that badge activity was not uniformly embraced but rather, individuals made choices on how much to explore this type of system. Nearly half of all teachers earned a low amount of badges (1-2), one-third of all teachers earned a medium amount of badges (3-8) and about one-fifteenth of all teachers earned a high number of badges (9-18).

The qualitative analysis via open coding and use of the Kearney et al (2012) framework showed badges supported learners to evaluate relevance of science learning to their classroom and reflect on application of STEM activities within personal and local settings. In year two, the research team asked the teachers to reflect on specific questions on how they would the implement activities and integrate with pre-existing lessons, professional development training or new activities. We found four major patterns emerged: note taking for existing lesson planning, archiving for future use, journaling and blogging resources for sharing within teams, and portfolio documentation for their own professional growth.

Significance
The findings underscore that a personalized learning approach for badges in professional learning allows for teachers to customize their activities to meet the diverse needs of divergent expertise, diversity in classroom settings, and personal interests. Our results inform badge design because we found multiple learning pathways. Learners in our study engaged with badges in different ways, and therefore, we posit that providing flexibility in choice can support the learners’ desired level of involvement. This work also suggests that when badge design allows learners to identify the depth of assessment, this may support learners to engage in the badging activities in ways that are relevant to professional goals.

Authors

• Christopher Gamrat, The Pennsylvania State University - University Park

• Heather Toomey Zimmerman, The Pennsylvania State University