Who’s Achievement? — Evaluating Self-Constructed and Peer-Evaluated Badge Systems in Online Classrooms
Ashley Ferro-Murray and Reginold Royston, both Designated Emphasis in New Media, are the recipients of the 2012 HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) Digital Media and Learning Competition Dissertation Research Grant for their project, “Who’s Achievement? — Evaluating Self-Constructed and Peer-Evaluated Badge Systems in Online Classrooms.”
In online classrooms, educators are starting to use badges as achievement incentives to actively engage students. Like points, levels or titles in video gameplay, badges may signal status or success in the context of virtual classrooms. But how many educational experiences and learning strategies are missed if forms of achievement are solely predetermined by instructors? When the marker for having learned something is a "badge," what learning is left out? Whose learning strategies are marginalized? These are the questions that Ashley Ferro-Murray and Reginold Royston seek to answer in their research. They want to understand how experiences of failure, exclusion, and marginality often inform the process of innovation and creativity.The HASTAC Digital Media and Learning Competition Dissertation Research Grant goes to support the creation and analysis of the open-source badge system, which will be implemented in models for online education. The grant will support the research team's evaluation of online classroom interactions for a new Web-based version of Associate Professor and BCNM Executive Committee member Greg Niemeyer's course American Cybercultures: Principles of Internet Citizenship, offered in the Department of Art Practice.