Looking Across Landscapes: Digital Badges as a Window Into Understanding Learning Opportunities in Chicago

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

Abstract

In 2013, the City-wide Learning Initiative (CWLI) was envisioned by youth-facing organizations, local government, private foundations, and technology designers to make connections between youth, learning activities, and social learning resources beyond the boundaries of home, school, and local community. Addressing local issues of equitable access to learning opportunities using the potential of networked technologies (Aspen Institute, 2014, US DOE, 2011), CWLI works to increase engagement and participation outside of school through informal face-to-face programs (e.g. libraries, museums) and self-paced online learning activities. CWLI is open to any youth in Chicago, a city with over 400,000 public school students, and participation is not bounded by time in any one program but rather available across years and different environments. On the system, youth can search for face-to-face opportunities and online activities based on interests and location, and can submit digital artifacts and receive feedback and learning badges for their participation that is archived in their CWLI profile.

Almost 200 youth-facing programs have been involved in CWLI, including museums, robotics clubs, and libraries, many contributing badges to represent the learning in their unique programs. Topics include coding and games, designing and making, earth and science, media, numbers, and community action. CWLI badges were intended to be both motivators to begin and sustain participation in the online environment, and visible and vetted evidence of learning and experience to individual users and their wider network (Gibson, Ostashewski, Flintoff, Grant, & Knight, 2013). These badges can be a personal evolving portfolio of work and experience across time and setting as youth develop and deepen interests, experiences, and expertise, and can also summarize specific accomplishments with outside entities as needed, such as for a college application or a potential job portfolio.

Identifying the gaps and barriers that prevent youth, particularly non-dominant and marginalized youth, from accessing quality learning opportunities in STEM is a key step in developing strategies to broaden participation. In this poster, we present geographic data that shows the learning opportunities available to students in different areas of Chicago and preliminary maps of corresponding participation and badging across the region in both face-to-face programs and online offerings. This project is unique in its scale, allowing us to use data visualizations from badging activity to reveal opportunities and barriers of participation across a large and diverse urban environment.

Authors

• Ugochi Cynthia Acholonu, DePaul University

• Nichole D. Pinkard, DePaul University

• Caitlin Kennedy Martin, DePaul University - Digital Youth Network

• Akili Lee, Digital Youth Network

• Sybil Madison-Boyd, Digital Youth Network