Badges: Do We Need to Show You Some Stinkin’ Badges?

Abstract

In the spring of 2019 in partnership with Macalester’s Center for Scholarship and Teaching I am leading a group of faculty and staff in an exploration of gamification and badges in higher education. Inspired by my Apple watch, I wanted to learn from faculty what they thought of gamification, badges and more. Are they interested, how do they define these terms, what challenges do they foresee. We anticipate reading some literature on the topic as well as partnering with our campus career center to learn about what they are hearing from employers. While Macalester is far away from implementing an on-campus badging system, this “Talking about Pedagogy” workgroup is likely to inform that exploration in the years to come. In this presentation/lightning talk/poster/panel I’ll share what I’ve learned from the faculty as well as what we learned together about the state of badging across the Higher Education landscape.