Digital Badge Portfolios as a Way to Help Youth Build New Pathways From Informal Information and Communications Technology Programs to College and Careers

• In Event: From Badges to Bridges: How Digital Micro-Credentials Support Collaboration, Partnership, and Learning Across Contexts

Abstract

Objective
Design League Badge Portfolios is a project that has explored how to provide underserved youth with a technology-supported method for presenting information and communication technology (ICT) work they create in an out-of-school program in ways that are both personally meaningful and that address the expectations of the gatekeepers of higher education institutions. In the digital badge system created through this project, youth submit work for educator review in order to receive badges. The badges are both indicators of experiences that led to work products and symbols of proficiency with specific ICT skills (e.g., Human-Centered Design, Prototyping, and Pitch and Publish). The project partners include researchers, two youth serving organizations and an art and design higher education institution.

Mode of Inquiry
The researchers have conducted interviews and surveys with youth participants to determine their understanding of the badges and how to create portfolios of their work to demonstrate their abilities, and how their STEM identities evolve as they participate in the program. Researchers also have documented the process that the partners have used to ensure that the badges earned by youth address the expectations of the higher education partners, as well as the process that the partners have used to bring on additional higher education partners.

Results/Significance
Findings from this project suggest the digital badges are a promising technology for helping young people build new pathways to college and careers. Through the course of the project the youth serving organizations and the art and design institution formulated a process to endorse the badges that youth earn. These discussions have been a joint effort to recognize and reward learning outcomes of out-of-school settings, that is closely aligned with the student learning outcomes in the first-year program at the higher education institution. This has helped both organizations toward their shared goals of supporting technology, engineering, and design pathways for youth underrepresented in those fields. As a part of this process the art and design institution has agreed to consider the badges as “plus factors” when a Design League youth applies to that institution. In addition, because of this endorsement work, a community college with a media design program has joined the partnership and is working toward granting course credit for program participants.

The research with youth has shown that these endorsement relationships with higher education institutions have increased the value that youth place on the badges. Youth who already identify generally as “technology people” learn to represent themselves more specifically as experienced in digital design work, because badges and the work they do to earn them is aligned to specific technology-related degrees. This gives the youth the power to communicate about their work in ways that make sense to higher education institutions.

The language of endorsement around micro-credentials is about relationships, trust, and cooperative progress toward goals of equity and workforce development. This project has shown that mutually beneficial relationships between informal program providers and higher education institutions are possible through micro-credentials.

Authors

• Wendy B. Martin, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Jaime Gutierrez, Education Development Center, Inc.

• Carlos Leon, Mouse

• Maggie Muldoon, Mouse