Digital Badging
The idea of a badge that recognizes merit is not a new concept. Boy and girl scouts are the most obvious example, along with military honors or even a gold star received on a homework assignment (Abramovich, Schunn, & Higashi, 2013; Bowen & Thomas, 2014; Wardrip, Abramovich, Kim, & Bathgate, 2016; Wu, Whiteley, & Sass, 2015) . The digital manifestation of these marks of achievements can be spotted in mobile applications such as FourSquare and UnTappd, and even in popular video games. Rather than sewing them onto a sash, however, digital badges may be collected and displayed online and showcased on social profiles (Carey, 2012; Hurst, 2015; Schmidt-Crawford, Thompson, & Lindstrom, 2014). The gamification elements of the digital badging movement are also nothing particularly novel. The concepts of “leveling up,” unlocking new quests, and strategically navigating a map of challenges are likely familiar to anyone who has played a tabletop or video game (Carey, 2012). In this suite of resources, we provide higher education faculty and K-12 educators with various materials and media to introduce the idea of digital badging to their students.
