Remember earning gold stars as a child?  For many, they were (and are) great incentives to keep up good behavior.  Digital badges present a new way to give those gold stars digitally and publicly.  When earned, digital badges can be displayed publicly online, with linked information as to “who issued the badge, the specifics of what had to be done to earn the badge and a description of what was learned or accomplished,” Jacob DeDecker (Michigan State University Extentsion) reports.

Do you struggle to motivate students?  Maybe digital badges can help!  Michigan State University Extension had some very useful findings after a trial-run of using digital badges for the 4-H program.  After completing a project in which they were able to earn digital badges, the “youth participating . . . were asked a series of questions to learn their thoughts about digital badging.” Here are the results, as reported by Michigan State University Extension:

87% of students felt that receiving a digital badge validates the knowledge and skills gained at camp
92% of students reported that receiving a digital badge helps document all the knowledge gain; including which takes place outside of school
89% of participants are interested in earning more digital badges in the future

Those are some big numbers!  To learn more about digital badges, check out the pre-study post by DeDecker.  The article sets up the study that was done with 4-H students.  The second post in the series provides further detail into the study.

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/kj964yv, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0