A Comprehensive Design-Based Approach to Motivating Engagement With Innovative Assessment and Credentialing Practices

• In Event: 25.024 - Synergies in Studies of Motivation and Learning: An Interactive Workshop

Abstract

Digital badges are “open” web-enabled credentials that can contain specific claims, evidence of competence, and information about how that evidence was obtained. Badges and the information they contain can then circulate in digital networks and gain additional meaning. Because open badges have been characterized by some as “extrinsic” rewards for learning, they have reignited simmering debates over the motivational consequences of decisions regarding assessment (formative versus summative, peer versus teacher, etc.) and credentialing (grades versus no-grades, private versus open, etc.). Because assessment and credentialing are a primary means for valuing learning in educational ecosystems, these decisions can have profound consequences for motivation, engagement, and learning. Many educators are now seeking guidelines for incorporating badges; the evidence contained in their badges can be used to evaluate the consequences of their assessment and credentialing decisions. As such, badges present an ideal opportunity to (a) re-examine the debate over extrinsic rewards and explore more general questions about assessment and credentialing and (b) consider the relevance of newer theories and approaches advanced in the handbook chapters.

Drawing from chapters 7, 11, 21, 22, 26, and 27, we will argue that guidelines for motivating learning with assessment and credentialing can be answered most effectively with three innovations that are well known in the learning sciences: These innovations are design-based research (DBR) methods, a situative theoretical framework and the corresponding situative synthesis, and productive disciplinary engagement (PDE). To elaborate, DBR sidesteps fundamental theoretical debates (e.g., “intrinsic” vs. “extrinsic” motivation) by (a) emphasizing the development of pragmatic “local” theory in the form of design principles that directly address practice, while (b) identifying the relevant contextual factors will vary when those principles are taken up in other contexts. More generally, the situative synthesis treats disciplinary engagement with social and material resources as the primary representation of learning, while treating the behavioral, cognitive, and neurological activity of individuals as secondary (i.e., residual) representations. Thus, assessment and credentialing decisions (including selection of relevant theories) can be guided by relative impact on disciplinary engagement. Finally, focusing on PDE leads to decision-making around the most productive forms of disciplinary engagement (rather than producing higher scores or more compelling artifacts). This is important because PDE is strongly associated with learning that is generative (transfers readily to new and different contexts) and because such a focus addresses the vexing confound that construct irrelevant easiness (i.e., “teaching to the test”) introduces in many studies of assessment and credentialing.

These innovations together are ideally suited for helping researchers and educators manage tensions between established theories and incorporate new theories and perspectives. This will allow them to work together to deliver assessment and credentialing design principles that can readily guide practice and be adapted and extended by others.

Authors

• Daniel T. Hickey, Indiana University

• Katerina Schenke, University of California - Los Angeles