Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012 - (Page 28)

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 25 to apply their skills in real ways,” says Marc Lesser, the education director of MOUSE. “The major outcome of [MOUSE Corps] is all about applying skills, but we also want to help them to envision a pathway that goes beyond 12th grade.” MOUSE, which operates in 400 sites across the nation, has been experimenting with awarding digital badges for the past two years, says Lesser. So far, the organization has awarded more than 19,000 digital badges for a range of activities, including interacting with other students in MOUSE on its socialnetworking website; taking care of schools’ IT tickets, or requests for technical help; completing workshops; and mastering technical skills such as networking or programming languages like HTML. The group’s move to digital badges was partly spurred by a desire to encourage students to think about the program as more than just a semester-long commitment, Lesser says. “We needed to start helping young people see a trajectory for themselves [in the program]. There’s far more impact when young people stay with us for longer periods of time,” he says. “Badges may help learners see steppingstones that don’t lay out in a linear way.” For example, once one badge is earned, a host of other badge-earning opportunities open up to students. MOUSE also had to devise a way to track where students were in the program and provide them feedback about their progress. “We needed a way to be able to give credit where credit was due in all different scenarios—when learners were experiencing or building skills in all kinds of different ways and around all different kinds of skills,” Lesser says. ‘Gamification’ of Education But skeptics point to research that shows that giving out rewards (extrinsic motivation) for tasks that students are already doing for their own personal enjoyment (intrinsic motivation) actually reduces the overall motivation students feel for those tasks and undermines student engagement. Henry Jenkins, the provost’s professor of communication, journalism, and cinematic arts at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, says badges run the risk of contributing to the “gamification” of education. “[Gamification] is a system which does not trust the power of intrinsic motivation and feels the need to add a layer of extrinsic motivation,” says Jenkins, who was interviewed by email. “Some forms of gamification rely so heavily on points schemes that there is far less effort to make the activities meaningful in and of themselves.” Already, many students are caught up in such a conception of education, he says, with high-achieving students focusing more on receiving high grades—or a multitude of badges—than the learning itself. “I worry that badges can become just another points system … [that] undercuts the motivational structures,” he says. And when it comes to informal learning, part of what makes such learning unique, he says, is precisely the lack of hierarchical structure and formalization that badges threaten to impose. “Too quick a move towards badges runs the risk of destroying the complex but fragile ecosystem within which participatory learning thrives,” Jenkins says. Providing adult validation for student achievements through digital badges in places where that validation did not previously play a role could turn some students off, he says. “There is a value in helping these youths find ways to value what they are doing as intellectual pursuits, and there is a value in seeking to validate these experiences and help them learn how to mobilize that knowledge as they learn to work through the formal structures that exert power over their lives,” says Jenkins. “But making badges too central to the process may alienate them before they have a chance to exert ownership over the knowledge they are acquiring.” That is part of the reason why digital badges should be viewed as feedback, rather than a reward, says Yowell, of the MacArthur Foundation. “What we think matters most for learning is, how do you give the learner and the folks supporting that learner ongoing feedback about how they’re doing?” she says. “We’re not having a conversation about replacing standardized tests or grades.” The badges competition hosted by the MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, and HASTAC concluded on March 1 at the Digital Media and Learning Conference in San Francisco, where 30 winners—chosen from 91 proposals— were awarded grants ranging from $25,000 to $175,000 to develop their ideas. The winners—including heavy hitters such as Intel, NASA, and Disney-Pixar—have one year to develop their digital badges, working with other winners to form a badge “ecosystem” that educators hope will transform the way achievement is acknowledged for learners of all ages. “Part of our goal for the competition was to build a community of thoughtful collaborators,” says Yowell. “We are welcoming of all those who want to join us in this 28 >> www.digitaldirections.org http://www.digitaldirections.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012

Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012
Contents
Editor's Note
DD Site Visit
Bits & Bytes
Game On
Applicable Knowledge
Digital Badges
Lessons From Higher Education
Competitive Edge
Recognizing Online PD
Ready or Not
Q&A
Opinion
Data Delivery

Digital Directions - Spring/Summer 2012

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