Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: Imagining a Badge System for e-Learning

Stilldon’t think gamification applies to you? Might be time to rethinkthat position. Seth Priebatsch, founder and CEO of SCVNGR,proclaimed during his keynote at SXSW Interactive that this is the“decade of the game layer.” As he sees it, the game layer is thenext evolution of the Web, and will quickly become a ubiquitouscomponent of the digital experience. If Priebatsch is right about thegame layer, then e-Learning practitioners need to start planning forthis eventuality.

Atpresent, the most prominent facet of gamification may be badges.Every social network, it seems, sees badges as the way to elicitloyal participation of its members. Badges are doled out foreverything from showing up at a particular location or establishment,to revisiting a Website, to sharing your e-mail list, to signing upfor a service, to winning a game. This system of rewards appealsbecause it acknowledges the small efforts and activities of badgerecipients by giving them a visible (if not tangible) symbol of theiraccomplishments and a way to show those off to other communitymembers.

What badges can do for e-Learning

In a new report from Yahoo! Research entitled, “Badgesin Social Media: A Social Psychological Perspective,” authorsAntin and Churchill present five primary functions that achievementbadges provide. I have adapted and expanded their list for e-Learningpurposes:

• Goal setting – Goals can take many forms beyond the learning and/or performance goals we establish for our e-Learning participants. Participants might respond to time-based challenges, opportunities to achieve multiple certifications, calls to act as a coach or resource for fellow learners, and even requests to hunt down typos or factual errors in an e-Learning program. Research suggests that goals that are a bit out of one’s comfort zone can be highly motivating to participants.

• Instruction – By presenting the range of badges available within an e Learning program, participants gain an orientation to the “value system” that surrounds the program. Badge systems can also provide an organizing framework for the kinds of social interactions that a learning program and associated practice community embrace.

• Recall – Badges remind the learner of the experience that brought about the award. While subtle, badges can also help the badge holder recall the specifics of a learning event, including that event’s learning moments.

• Expertise and reputation – Badges provide a visual encapsulation of a badge-earner’s accomplishments, interests, and interactions. When displayed, colleagues can gain information about others’ skill sets, levels of participation, and additional factors that are important to the group.

• Status – Badges convey a level of status to those who earn them. The more badges earned, the higher the status gained. When badge systems provide rewards in many categories, badge holders can gain status related to things like expertise, team contribution, and helpfulness and availability to others.

• Group identification – In receiving a badge, the (l)earner gains not only a sense of accomplishment, but also feels acknowledgement by the group and the group’s organizers. This contributes to the learner’s feelings of connection to and affiliation with the group as a whole. Particularly for distributed teams, these feelings of connection can be quite valuable to enhancing the cohesion of the group.

• On-going incentive – Badge systems, by their very nature, keep learners connected to the learning community. The possibility of gaining new badges resulting from new learning and participation challenges, monitoring the achievements and successes of colleagues, and comparing personal stats with others’ accomplishments all serve to enhance one’s sense of attachment and to spur one to maintain one’s learning momentum.

Badges made simple

Designingand implementing a badge system need not be a complicated orexpensive undertaking. Vendors like BigDoor, Bunchball, and othershave robust badge systems that integrate easily with existingprograms, and they offer lots of good resources to help you tailortheir tools to your requirements. Costs are free to low, andfrequently, their engineers will handle the actual implementationwork for you. In addition, these vendors also provide opportunitiesfor participation in their monetization programs, which can not onlymitigate the costs of implementation but also add new sources ofrevenue-generation to your existing revenue model.

So,get your game face on. There’s a “We Got Badges” badge waitingfor you.

References

Antin, J.: Churchill, E.F., CHI 2011,ACM, Vancouver, BC (2011)