Boy Scouts and badges

One of the current buzzwords in education is "badges." Cathy Davidson at HASTAC does a good job of defining the term and its educational implications in her post Badges Now. She writes:

The advantage of digital badges over test scores is that they are customizable and verifiable, and they can be awarded outside normal, traditional institutions charged, in our society, with credentialing expertise.  Unlike other customizable formats—such as resumes—it is harder to “fudge” badges since they come with the meta data that tells you why they were awarded and can provide contact information for the person or institution who awarded them. 

I don't know the origin of the use of badges in education (both gamers and the Khan Academy seem to have popularized the concept), but as a Boy Scout, I experienced educational power of badges 50 years ago. I was at best an indifferent student in school, but I voluntarily learned in Boy Scouts.

One had to earn merit badges in order to advance in rank in the Scouts. As I recall, I earned badges in things like first aid, camping, hiking, outdoor cooking, swimming, reading, and stamp collecting. Each of these badges I displayed proudly on a sash worn over my uniform (at least until it was totally uncool to be a Boy Scout in ninth grade). Grandson Paul (at right) who will always be a totally cool Boy Scout tells me that one can now earn badges for geocaching, computer gaming, and robotics. According to the BSA website, one can earn a badge in 130 different areas.

Boy Scout badges worked for a variety of reasons:

• Topics were self-selected - you learned about what interested you.
• Skills learned were practical and concrete rather than academic and abstract.
• Clear requirements for earning the badge were stated up front - no guess work. One was judged on performance, not on a test.
• Assessment was often done by an expert in the field rather than the scoutmaster - a lawyer in the community assessed my stamp collection work since he was a philatelist.
• Skill demonstration was often public - in front of peers, other scout troups, and parents - leading to a higher level of concern over one's proficiency.
• A large string of brightly colored merit badges were a source of pride and accomplishment. I suppose I could make a button with my college GPA or GRE scores, but it just wouldn't be the same.

Participation in Boy Scouts was and is, of course, voluntary. Which may explain why a system like badges and ranks were used instead of testing or other forms of promotion. Badges are fun; tests are not.  Advancement is based on meaningful objective performance measurements, not the subjective approval of a single individual like the scoutmaster. And nobody is "normed."

There is a lot of discussion right now about "alternative forms of credentialing" in the post secondary world and perhaps this reflects the growing belief that college is no longer the guarantee of vocational success that it once was - that universities must compete among other forms of post-secondary learning options in order to stay relevant. Will this give badges legs? I hope so, actually. Traditional colleges could use a little wake-up call.

But back in the real world of K-12, badges used in conjunction with LMSs like Edmodo and a game-like approach to meeting learning objectives will continue to grow - and rightfully so. Plainly, it's just a better way to do school.

Take it from a Boy Scout.

Can personalization be commercialized?

If there was an overriding theme to this year's ISTE conference (other than the right iPad app will save the whales, improve your love life, and eliminate toe fungus), it was all about personalizing education - and that you need a big-ass vendor to sell you an expensive product to do so. "Personalization" was in a large percentage of vendor pitches for a variety of products, but mostly for some kind of computerized learning management system.

But I was hearing another set of voices as well, those of passionate individuals who want to personalize education by giving students choices, making learning relevant, and paying as much attention to dispositions as to academic skills. Here the technology was used to enable student access to information of individual interest, to create portfolios of published work, and to enable small group collaboration and communication.

Add these terms to differentiated instruction, flipped classrooms, etc. and the water gets pretty murky.

Other writers have set out to define terms associated with non-whole group instruction. Some, including Barbara Bray, have designed extensive comparisons. I'd more or less dismissed these tables as semantic nitpicking, but the conversations I heard at ISTE made me re-evaluate. So this is my quick n' dirty definitions of a few terms as this simple mind understands them:

• Differentiated instruction: A class is sorted into small groups by rough ability levels determined by the classroom teacher. Each group is given separate resources, activities, and goals appropriate for its members' abilities. The teacher works with small groups in rotation or works primarily with the lowest performing group. Technology is used to locate and provide access to materials and activities at varying degrees of difficulty. All students have the same learning outcomes.
• Individualized learning: Each student uses a computerized program that breaks low-level learning tasks into small objectives. Students receive lessons and are given ongoing assessments that determine if they move forward or are to be given another round of lessons. All students have the same learning outcomes and students work alone at workstations. Not exactly sure what the teacher's role is here - to hand out bathroom passes to the 80 students in her lab?
• Personalized learning: Each student, in direct consultation with his/her teacher, sets both areas of study and learning outcomes based on interest and ability. The work is project or problem-based with authentic assessment tools describing mastery of work. Work habits, attitudes, organization, and other dispositions are regarded as important elements of such learning. 

In expressing this dichotomy with Hank Thiele over in Illinois, he suggest that all three types of non-whole group instruction may have a role to play in today's best schools. Get the low-level skills of punctuation, math facts, etc., out of the way quickly and effectively using a individualized learning computer program, leaving time for the important personalized education all kids should be receiving.

I do know this: if a vendor claims its product "personalizes" the learning experiences, be cautious and ask exactly what that means. Treating everyone pretty much the same way, holding everyone to the same set of learning outcomes, and allowing no choices, is a pretty strange way of "personalizing" anything.

See also: Three futures: Skinner Elementary, Dewey High School, and Duncan Middle School.