Empowering Youth Co-Designers to Promote Student Adoption of a Digital Badge System

• In Event: Youth Co-Design: The Possibilities, Affordances, and Challenges of Including Youth in Educational Design

Abstract

Objective:
Adoption of a new sociotechnical system by the larger stakeholder group after the design phase can be one of the most difficult aspects of the overarching co-design process (Muilenburg & Berge, 2016). This paper examines the role of youth co-designers in promoting adoption among their peers of a digital badge system they helped design for an afterschool science program at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center. In addition to revealing how youth co-designers can help overcome challenges of adoption, our investigation provides new insight into how youth co-designers continue to develop a sense of identity and ownership of their work even after the design process has ended.

Theoretical Perspective:
We draw on communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1994) to understand how youth designers navigate their dual roles as co-designers and members of the afterschool science program, as well as how they use these dual roles to promote adoption of the badge system among their peers who are unfamiliar with digital badges. In addition, we reflect on the equity agenda promoted by participatory design scholars (Druin, 2002; Guha, Druin, & Fails, 2013; Iversen & Dindler, 2013)[KD1] , to consider how we might empower youth co-designers by assisting them in developing a sense of ownership and identity as trainers and ambassadors to the larger youth population.

Method:
In prior work, we documented youths’ perspectives on their role as co-designers of a digital badge system intended to recognize and reward high school students’ achievements in an afterschool science program (Authors, 2017). Following completion of the initial phase of the badge design process, the youth designers started to take on roles as trainers and ambassadors of the badge platform in an effort to encourage their peers to engage with it regularly. These roles are the focus of the current investigation. Data include video footage, analytical memos, and artifacts generated during the design and training sessions, and our data analytic approach draws from interaction analysis (Jordan & Henderson, 1995) and thematic analysis (Boyatzis, 1998).

Results:
Youth co-designers are particularly adept at navigating the different vocabularies between their communities of practice. In particular, they are able to translate the vocabularies used by the design team into language commonly used by students at the science center. Their perspective as members of both communities of practice positions them uniquely to help the broader population of youth stakeholders to appreciate the value and relevance of digital badges. We plan to continue developing a case study of this process to closely examine the different ways in which youth use their design knowledge to empower themselves and build a sense of identity and ownership in design (Taylor & Hall, 2013).

Significance:
This work shows how youth co-designers can help overcome a persistent challenge in co-design projects: the adoption of the designed artifact by the wider population of stakeholders. In the process, we contribute new insight into how youth involvement in co-design can continue to empower and educate even after the conclusion of the main co-design phase of a project.

Authors

• Caroline Pitt, University of Washington - Seattle

• Adam Bell, University of Washington - Seattle

• Katie Davis, University of Washington