Talk:Digital badge

Notification
We are a group of people working with Mozilla Open Badges and we are discussing a series of suggestions we would like to submit to the reflection of Wikipedians for possible revisions:

Staging page for 'Digital badges': https://wiki.mozilla.org/Open_Badges/Wikipedia/staging/Digital_Badges

Staging page for 'Mozilla Open Badges': https://wiki.mozilla.org/Open_Badges/Wikipedia/staging/Mozilla_Open_Badges

This is still "work in progress", but we thought that it might a good idea to establish an initial contact. Serge (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:09, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Comments
"The use of digital badges as credentials remained largely under the radar until 2011, following the release of “An Open Badge System Framework,” a white paper authored by Peer 2 Peer University and The Mozilla Foundation. In the paper, badges are explained as “a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest,” with examples of badge systems used by the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, PADI diving instruction, and the more recently popular geo-locative games, like Foursquare."
 * Proper URL for citation of this white paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xGuyK4h7DLVeOrFPeegB4ORMutblJf9xVRZCizgx_j8/edit?hl=en&authkey=CNarn4UJ</ref Jadeforester (talk) 13:15, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

"While physical badges have been in use for hundreds of years, the idea of digital badges is a relatively recent development drawn from research into gamification." Yes, citation needed :), but my gut says that this isn't the case--or at least not depending on *precisely* how you are defining digital badges. Is the EFF Free Speech ribbon a digital badge? How about the moderator icon on many community BBSs? If not, why not? -- Halavais (talk) 03:39, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * You're probably correct. I just slapped the current lead in there so that the draft wasn't blank. We probably need separate sections each for social, instructional, and whatever other categories of badges we feel exist. This also addresses your other comment as well... MyNameWasTaken (talk) 16:57, 22 March 2012 (UTC)


 * ditto to Halavais's comment below--I'm going to haunt the talk page, too ;-) I did a deep dive into the Oxford English Dictionary to see what I could find about the origins of the word "badge", and wrote about it in a blog entry from last year: "...badges were a device to signal membership and rank within a group (1400s). But badges also signaled immaterial things like love and virtue (1500s) and knowledge (1600s). By the 1800s, one writer says degrees had "become social badges." There are entries in the OED that also show how badges started to become synonymous with branding logos around the 1970s. Ditnog (talk)


 * Barry Joseph of Global Kids also points to the origins of badges for learning and game-based badges from a post he wrote on DMLCentral.net -- "The new interest around badges appears to have begun in response to a talk by Eva L. Baker, 'The End(s) of Testing,' her 2007 Presidential Address for the American Educational Research Association. Critiquing assessment within schools, she never actually used the term 'badges' but rather, 'qualifications.' The response by some academics and foundations soon converged with, as described to me by James Paul Gee, 'people influenced by gaming that saw the motivating power of the ‘achievements’ built into games.'" Ditnog (talk) 15:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm just going to haunt the talk page, I think: " collection, and display of digital badges across a wide variety of instructional sites." So, are these badges "instructional"? If so, does that make FourSquare & HuffPost badges instructional sites? I don't think that "digital badges" are synonymous with "learning badges"... but frankly I'm not sure. This feels like a definition that hasn't really reached consensus. -- Halavais (talk) 14:48, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. There needs to be a difference between digital badges and learning badges. I see learning badges as a subset of digital badges. But that's just my opinion. In any case, you can't talk about digital badges without including the Foursquare type badges. Promelior (talk) 21:22, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * At first I wanted to add stuff here, but then I realized it was too vague - just digital badges - and not specifically badges for learning. If the later, I am very interested, as I think this is the right framework to describe our interests (badges that MIGHT teach something, or might be USED for teaching, are very different from the intentional development of digital badges to teach something; this can be contrasted with badges in, for example, video games, but of course the line gets blurred when some badges in games teach something ABOUT the game. Nonetheless, I would think we could call this entry digital badges and clarify at the top that this term is being intentionally used for digital badges designed for learning, and that other digital badges with other designs also exist (but are not part of this entry). If we move in that direction, I would be happy to add some recent history of the recent interest in digital badges, as well as material from the Badge Frame google doc, plus all those citations I have collected and examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bjosephonwiki (talk • contribs) 15:17, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Would it not be better to have the contrast between badges for learning and other types of badges that accomplish other things (like motivate users or signal a users' a reputation) all on the same article? This way it is clearer to the reader that badges as learning assessment tools are a special type of badge. I guess it depends on whether there is an article's worth of material on this subject (which I expect there is). Maybe it is best for now to get all of the material down and reassess what can be split up and what can be moved to other articles. Promelior (talk) 16:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Proposal
I propose that we re-title this page as Digital Badges in Education and incorporate most of the general information about digital badges in general (and their various forms) into the main Badge article, which we can then link to this new article. MyNameWasTaken (talk) 15:57, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * How would this be different just having "Digital Badges in Education" as a potential sub-section to "Digital Badges." I can see it being necessary to clarify the difference between digital badges as assessment tools versus digital badges as just pure motivators but I can also see education systems using both types of badges. I'm a bit unclear on what content would be appropriate for an article specifically for Digital Badges in Education versus just a sub-section. 99.19.70.189 (talk) 16:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I suppose I just think that since there's so much conversation surrounding (and thus, sources regarding) badges specifically for education (and will hopefully continue to be) that, given the length of the Badge article, its likely to be overwhelmed by it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MyNameWasTaken (talk • contribs) 22:47, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

While mindful of Barry's note above, I don't know that there is that much on either digital badges or digital badges for education. I think there are some examples that could be pulled out and would be useful, but it's hard because of where we are in the hype cycle (a lot more talk than action). I'm also not sure that (despite my note above) HuffPost badges are *not* learning badges. It all depends on how you frame the word "learning." For example, I argue here that the feedback structure on Digg is a tool for a certain kind of learning/training, though it was perhaps not intended as such. In short--the line between learning badges and "nonlearning" badges seems to be a bit fuzzy. And I suspect that "Badges in Education" (does this not imply institutionalized learning?) and "Learning Badges" might also be different... -- Halavais (talk) 21:52, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Under Construction Template
So, I just added this (makeshift) template. Since there are a fair amount of people contributing, I wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of the discussions taking place about the scope and organization of the article. It can't hurt to keep adding anything relevant to the article, since it can all be moved wherever it needs to once these discussions reach a consensus. Regardless, reaching a consensus should be prioritized since it will allow us to work with a more defined goal/purpose! MyNameWasTaken (talk) 16:08, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Badge backpack
EARNED DIGITAL BADGES

http://beta.openbadges.org/share/f2cfdad81040e5113ab7b8a5c144c4ac/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dnegusse (talk • contribs) 04:16, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Digital Badges
http://beta.openbadges.org/share/f2cfdad81040e5113ab7b8a5c144c4ac/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dnegusse (talk • contribs) 04:17, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Accreditation
Who accredits the badge issuers? What meaning or value does a badge have if there is no underlying accreditation? What governmental agencies have recognized badges as a pre-qualification for jobs or governmental programs? Seriously, can these issues be at least mentioned, if not fully explained? N0w8st8s (talk) 23:17, 16 August 2020 (UTC)n0w8st8s