Digital Badges for Recognizing, Assessing, Motivating, and Evaluating Learning in Games and Beyond

Digital badges are web-based tokens of accomplishment and learning. Thanks the 2012 MacArthur/Gates Badges for Lifelong Learning initiative, hundreds of formal and informal programs are now incorporating digital badges. The Design Principles Documentation Project is capturing the knowledge being generated by thirty diverse programs that were directly funded by the initiative to develop digital badges. This poster will present the design principles for using digital badges for recognizing, assessing, motivating, and evaluating learning. Visitors will get a seek-peek at the now-private project database that is organized around the 5-7 general principles that have emerged in each of the four areas. Each principle is accompanied by a burgeoning database of the relevant research literature and illustrations of how that principle has been enacted in specific projects.