Badges in the Classroom

I think Badges are a great tool when approaching a classroom environment. As I am going into Instructional Design, I think they could also be useful in the corporate setting if the incentive and reward is high enough. For example, if badges can also equate to certifications that can eventually be placed on a resume (such as badge for completing an online training through LinkedIn), this will be a great incentive for employees as it will benefit the company and their future employment. 

Looking at the educational setting and how badges can be used, putting students in charge of assigning badges to each other rather than just the teacher can also add value. According to Hortsman et al. (2020), badges encourage "youth to interact with each other and positions them as having the expertise to recognize achievement in each other". This creates a collaborative and inclusive classroom environment. To make sure students are not left out, teacher's can assign certain students to others for peer evaluations.

When creating a badge system, Hortsman (2020) also expresses that it is important to think of a hierarchy system when it comes to the order. For example, Badge A will be viewed as easier to obtain than Badge B, etc. Badges should also be designed in order to position learners as "agents of their own learning" (Hortsmann et al., 2020). 

In terms of the music classroom, badges can be given to other student's for their participation in concerts, for something they excelled at in class that day, or for class participation. Badges can also be used towards a greater class reward. For example, if enough student's receive a total of X number of badges, they can earn a pizza party at the end of the year. Extrinsic rewards can be very motivating for students especially in elementary and middle school. 








Comments

  1. LissaJune 5, 2021 at 7:49 AM

    Hi!

    I like the idea of having students assign other's badges. I think badges could be a very cool thing to introduce to students, especially middle school students and could help encourage learners to work towards earning something in a variety of areas. I think badges could be a fun way to build classroom community too, like having kindness badges or helping a friend badges. I never thought about badges as having a hierarchy, but I like that having a hierarchy makes it even more of a challenge and achievement to earn the badges at the top that are harder to attain.

    ReplyDelete
  2. VanessaJune 5, 2021 at 8:34 PM

    I think badges touch on a human aspect of us all -- we like to be recognized for the things that we do. I like the idea of collectively pooling them and working toward a class reward.

    ReplyDelete

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