Module 2 Assignment 1: Digital Badges and its Tetrad

Digital Badges

Digital Badges is an online record of achievements (Google, 2013). A badge icon usually appear on a web page and may indicate completion of an assignment or a game, mastery of skills or knowledge, and representation of achievements (EDUCAUSE, 2012). The implementation of digital badges allows for a transformation of traditional lecture-pedagogy to multiple-level learning based on collaboration and cooperation through interactive use of media, social network, and other online resources. Digital badges can be used in education, community-based programs, and work-related settings. Software packages such as the Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure verify whether a certain level of knowledge or skills has been met and award the badge. To get a badge, students may be required to watch a certain number of videos or read a certain number of articles during a certain period of time. Digital badges focus on individual student accomplishments and can be a part of a resume or portfolio. However, it is not clear at this point whether badges will be accepted by universities and employment agencies. If they will, the credibility, validity, and security aspects of digital badges should be considered (EDUCAUSE, 2012). 

The Digital Badges Tetrad

Physical badges have been used for centuries to represent different levels of achievements in armies or other organisations. Digital badges appeared on the scene with the development of gamification. In 2005, Microsoft implemented a digital achievement system in the Xbox 360. In 2007, the American Education Research Association asked software companies to focus on the development of digital badge system. In 2010, Basno, a digital badge service provider, launched a digital badges platform that could be used to reflect athletic accomplishments. In 2011, the Mozilla Foundation began developing a common system for collecting and displaying badges on instructional sites. Recently, Basno and Mozilla Open Badge have began working on an set of standards for exchanging badges across the web (EDUCAUSE, 2012).  

References

EDUCAUSE. (2012). 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Badges. Retrieved http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7085.pdf

Google (2013). Badge System Design Principles. Retrieved from 
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A6T3OcB7R-1sobaJNiDbu5-wssrmQB2HUZKw3qzy2LQ/edit

Module 1 Assignment 1: Current Trends in Educational Technology 

The Technology that Shapes Learning in Higher Ed

With the development of Learning Management Systems (LMS), the traditional in-class lecture-based instruction in higher education is being gradually superseded by web-based face-to-face, hybrid, or fully-online delivery modes. Moodle, which was developed by Australian programmer Martin Dougiamas in the early 2000s to improve the effectiveness of online learning, is one existing LMS and is used in 219 countries (Moodle, 2015). My community college began using this open-source platform about ten years ago. Since then, many instructors of our institution have started utilizing numerous features of this product in their face-to-face, hybrid, and online courses.

Challenges and Pitfalls Associated with this Technology

Some users of Moodle find this product to be very tech heavy, not intuitive or user- friendly, with a little clunky interface (Silberman, 2013). Our instructors complain that with every update some old convenient features disappear completely and some are changed dramatically so much that they have to relearn a lot. Thus, the users of Moodle may need very frequent technical support, which is not free for many institutions.

I have noticed many limitations in our current 2.7.3 version of Moodle with creating online quizzes from scratch. There is no a convenient and quick opportunity to create multiple versions of the same quiz with non-numeric questions. The automatic question marks do not allow for a lot of flexibility. For example, there is an automatic question mark of 90% and 100%, but if I want to assign a score that is between these two marks, I have to do it manually. It is not possible to grade the same question for all students. There is no option that can make an assignment visible to an individual student only.  The Gradebook also has some limitations.

The Societal Needs and Benefits

Distance learning has become widespread in higher education. As all LMSs, Moodle fulfills the need for online teaching and learning. Many students, educators, and businessmen benefit from using this product: there are currently 65380 registered Moodle sites (Moodle, 2015). However, Moodle has an additional advantage: it is free, open-resource platform that is supported by several software-developers around the world.

How Pitfalls can be Avoided

There is a plug-in software called WalkMe for Moodle that can be helpful in learning how to use the system. It can reduce the number of complaints about the non-intuitive structure of Moodle (Silberman, 2013). Moodle developers can be directly contacted to improve existing features. I send them my suggestion on a regular basis. Hopefully, they will be implemented in the next version of Moodle.

The Link to Moodle Site  

The Moodle main site is located at https://moodle.org/.  This site has current and previous Moodle documents. Historical information and statistics is also available.   

References

Siberman, J. (2013, August 6). Challenges of Moodle UX and how to address them. Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/challenges-of-moodle-ux-and-how-to-address-them
Moodle. (2015). History and Statistics, Retrieved from https://docs.moodle.org