What a Badge Is Worth: The Acceptability of Badges as Indicators of Experience

• In Event: Innovating Education Practice Through Digital Badges: Recent Research, Current Practices, and Future Directions

Abstract

Objectives
Web badges as indications of experience or learning could fundamentally redefine the credentials that validate learning. Learners pursue their own interests, but also must weigh this against the ways in which others--especially future employers and future academic institutions--will make sense of their abilities.

We are interested in the ways in which admissions officers and others evaluate work represented by a badge, and how this might change in the future. How might a badge be considered and weighed when presented as part of an undergraduate application? What might encourage or impede the use of badges in this context? By understanding and making explicit how admissions staff treat badges, we might add to their value for students.

Theoretical Framework
Our framework for understanding the acceptance of microcredentialling draws heavily from Adoption Theory, which has often been adapted to educational contexts (Baker-Eveleth et al., 2007; Ndubisi, 2006; Straub, 2009). More widely, we also seek to identify the elements Rogers (1983) suggests as mediating adoption pace: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. The related Extended Technology Acceptance model (Venkatash et al., 2000; 2003) suggests that users’ perceptions toward a technology’s usefulness and ease of use influence their adoption decisions.

Methods and Data Sources
To better understand this from the perspective of those working directly on admissions decisions at the undergraduate level, we engaged twenty academic admissions professionals working in public and private four-year universities in the United States, first in a series of semi-structured interviews and then in a series of five online video focus groups. The participants were given brief articles on learning badges before the focus groups and were asked to discuss the ways in which learning badges and the badge infrastructure might relate to their decision process and to earlier admissions innovations. The resulting transcripts are then analyzed for themes related to adoption of badges as a tool and evaluation of their worth as an indicator of aptitude.

Results
While the research is ongoing, some themes have already been made clear. Badges represent a fairly ambiguous concept, even to those who have had some exposure. Many are interested in standards for evaluation and clear indications from institutions that stand behind the badges. It seems clear that the factors underlying the certification of a skill are more important than the way in which it is delivered.

Scholarly Significance
While learners may be motivated by the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to their peers and to their teachers through the explicit awarding and display of a badge, badges are destined to remain trivial if they fail to be accepted outside the community in which they are awarded. This work provides an early view of approaches that will encourage such acceptance and provides a framework for future badge system assessment.

Authors

• Alexander Halavais, Arizona State University

• K. Hazel Kwon, Arizona State University

• Shannon Havener, Arizona State University

• Jason Striker, Arizona State University