Tool Brings Gaming into the Classroom

“Gameful” instruction allows students to choose assignments they think are challenging and uses software to guide them through those choices. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, recently launched a tool to make that learning approach available in the classroom.

GradeCraft employs competitive leaderboards, badges, and links to unlock information to help students work their way through the coursework. The web application also allows instructors to create course shells in the learning management system (LMS) where students are encouraged to try new things, as well as receive analytics about their progress.

“Everyone starts at zero and then they build toward mastery of the course material,” Barry Fishman, a U-M professor who helped developed the tool, said in a university release. “We get questions about how rigorous a course is given how many students earn high grades, but we consistently hear instructors describe their students doing creative and high-quality work. When you design these environments properly, you can create an incredible learning experience for students.”

The tool, developed in 2012, was made available to all U-M faculty through its LMS earlier this year. Some parts of the gameful learning software are now being used in 58 courses, serving more than 10,000 U-M students. A site license has also been purchased by the University of Arizona.

“We believe gameful is a great way to reconnect students to learning and we’re excited to bring it to a larger audience,” Fishman said.

Higher Ed Embracing Badges

Even though most employers continue to require new hires to have college degrees, diplomas are not always the best way to show that employees have the skills needed to do the job. That’s where digital badges are coming into play.

“The bachelor’s degree or Ph.D. will never go away,” Philip DiSalvio, dean of the College of Advancing and Professional Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, said in an article for University Business. “But every higher-ed portfolio is going to have some form of alternative credential that will demonstrate a student’s competency in certain areas.”

Digital badges, available for everything from problem-solving to career readiness, can be posted to social media sites, stored in digital portfolios, and displayed on specially designed platforms. The badges are linked to lists of skills students have mastered, in addition to the grades they’ve received.

Colleges and universities are trying to stay ahead of the curve on badges by developing programs that recognize skills students have acquired through their studies. Badges can connect skills needed in the workforce to what a college teaches, as well as provide a clearer picture of a student’s academic record.

“The reason they’re taking off in higher education is most employers are not getting the information they need about people emerging from higher ed,” said Jonathan Finkelstein, found and CEO of the badging platform Credly. “The degree itself doesn’t get to the level of describing particular competencies.”

Accepting Alternative Credentials Varies

Alternative credentials are given for learning experiences gained through massive open online courses, training that issues badges, and boot camps. However, institutions take differing approaches on how they issue credit for adult prior learning, according to a report from the Online Learning Consortium and the Research Center for Digital Learning & Leadership.

The study, Alternative Credentials: Prior Learning 2.0, profiled the assessment practices at six institutions, finding that each understood the need for quality measurements. However, internal assessment takes too much time and so is normally outsourced to a nonprofit organization.

Data management and reporting was also a challenge for the schools. Student data can be insufficient for evaluation or maintained by more than one department on campus, making the decision-making process on credit more difficult.

“This availability, or lack of availability, of reliable data leads to mostly suppositions made surrounding time to degree completion,” Jill Buban, senior director of research and innovation for the Online Learning Consortium, wrote in the report. “We know that prior-learning evaluation processes increase time towards degree completion and can be a cost savings for students. However, without accurate data there aren’t identifiable percentages around specific types of credentials, increasing time to degree completion.”

Most Institutions Are Offering Badges

More than 90% of colleges and universities now offer alternative credentialing and one in five issue badges, according to research conducted by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association. The popularity of microcredentials is driven by workers who understand that displaying badges makes it easier to highlight specialized skills.

“You can present an employer with a résumé and it shows what you have collectively done over the years,” Charlene Templeton, assistant dean for continuing education at Anne Arundel Community College, Arnold, MD, said in an article for University Business. “But a badge shows there are specific things you have achieved.”

Badges can be added to a résumé or shared on social media, allowing employers to see links to detailed descriptions of the skills and competencies developed during the course. Anne Arundel has awarded hundreds of badges in the last two years, while Stony Brook University, part of the State University of New York system, has handed out 130 badges in professional development to working professionals in human-resource management and higher-education administration.

“You may be waiting two or four years to earn a degree, but you’re developing skills and knowledge along the way—badges make this knowledge visible,” said Ken Kindblom, interim dean for the school of professional development at Stony Brook.

More Schools Supplement Degrees with Badges

More colleges and universities are turning to digital badges as a means to help students—including returning graduates—demonstrate their mastery of specific skills to potential employers, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Badges are intended to enhance degrees, not replace them. In the Illinois State University honors program, students can earn digital badges for both coursework and for related hands-on experiences. “That could include academic achievements, like seminar course or biology lab work, or noncollege skills learned through internships or volunteer work,” wrote Paul Fain in the article.

The honors program determines the criteria for each badge and may require faculty and/or students to provide documentation or work samples. Students can decide which badges are viewable, so they can tailor their profile for the type of jobs they’re seeking.

Some badges provide official verification that a student did indeed serve in a certain capacity, such as being a campus peer mentor, or participated in a project or activity.

Other institutions are using badges to designate specific technical skills attained by students, such as information technology or advanced manufacturing.

Taking Nontraditional Paths to College

The New York Times reported in May that Malia Obama would attend Harvard University, but only after spending a year away seeking experiences outside of the classroom. The gap-year approach is one of three ways identified in a new study as the most popular nontraditional pathways students take instead of going straight to college.

The other options are collecting credentials and badges from online resources and skills program to skip college altogether.

“College costs keep growing and student debt is over one trillion dollars,” Richard Wang, CEO of the coding bootcamp Coding Dojo, said in an article for eCampus News. “These alternative education options can help keep student debt under control while providing individuals with real-world experiences and skills employers are looking for in job candidates.”

The report noted that colleges and universities support nontraditional alternatives as a way to help students perform better once they do arrive on campus. Admissions departments can also focus on those interests developed through a year of personalized learning to attract the best students.

“As a result of these educational developments, I refrain from spending all of my counseling hours talking about grades, classes, and test scores,” said Alex Ellison, founder of the educational consulting firm Dunce Labs. “Instead, I dedicate time with the students with whom I work to explain the values of starting a blog, creating an independent project they can be proud of, and building a unique portfolio of all the cool stuff they have done over the years.”

Use of Alternative Credentials Grows

A new study found that 94% of colleges and universities are offering some form of alternative credentials to their students. It also noted millennial students were more likely to favor educational rewards built around badging and certificates rather than the traditional bachelor’s degree.

The research from the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA), Pennsylvania State University, and the publisher Pearson reported that one in five institutions offer badges and 64% of respondents said their institution saw the use of alternative credentialing as an important strategy. It also found that 71% of institutions consistently work with the business community to offer their students internships and job placement.

“The degree will always be an important credential, but it won’t always be the gold standard,” Jim Fong, director of the UPCEA Center for Research and Marketing Strategy, said in a release. “As millennials enter the prime years of their careers and move into positions of greater power, we’ll see more alternative credentials for specific industries and possibly across the board. Higher education institutions, especially those in our survey, are showing that they are being progressive with workforce needs.”

Universities Launch Microcredentials Platform

Six universities have teamed to launch the University Learning Store, a platform that will help job seekers and working professionals earn microcredentials in business and technical fields.

Learners will have to prove their knowledge through verified, hands-on assessments as measures of competencies to earn a microcredential, according to a report in eCampus News. In addition, learners can choose to combine microcredentials to earn larger certification from an institution.

“Although an array of nondegree credentials exist, they can leave employers guessing at their true value,” said David Schejbal, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Extension, one of the founding institutions of the project. “With the University Learning Store, leading institutions have joined forces to introduce credentials that clearly indicate the capabilities of the credential holder.”

Microcredentials, available as a printable certificate or digital badge, can be added to a student’s resume after successfully completing an assessment. Courses on the University Learning Store site cost $50-$150, but are currently being offered at half-price for a limited time. Each credential can be earned in days or weeks.

“This is an innovation in skill credentialing that the workforce, and higher ed, has not seen before,” said Nelson Baker, dean of Georgia Tech Professional Education. “At Georgia Tech, we bring the same rigor and real-world applicability to our nondegree educational opportunities as we do other programs. Industry validation is the final frontier of proving the value of lifelong learning.”

Will Credentials Displace Degrees?

Students expect education to improve their job prospects. At the same time, employers want job candidates who have acquired the high-tech skills and qualifications as they enter the job market.

This is causing a shift away from the traditional college degree and toward credentials, such as online badges, course certificates, and dynamic assessments, according to Aaron Skonnard, CEO of the online training provider Plurasight. In a post for TechCrunch, Skonnard predicted that credentials will at least be as relevant as the college degrees because they offer “more insight into hard skills.”

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) got the discussion started by making higher education somewhat more accessible. Completion rates proved to be an issue, so MOOC providers adapted and expanded beyond free education to create training and certification programs that use credentials for skills that employers want.

“We live in a time of real-time analytics, and we dashboard everything inside the organization, from sales to operation costs to customer sentiment,” Skonnard wrote. “It’s only natural that this trend should extend into the way we vet, assess, and track the skills and abilities of our prospective and current employees. The more data options we have, the more deliberate we can become about making good hiring decisions, and the more prescriptive we can be about addressing monumental skills gaps in the workplace. The college degree alone can’t provide this kind of holistic insight.”

Group Bringing Microdegrees to Campus

The idea of microcredentialing through nanodegrees and badges is becoming more accepted, but limited mostly to educational technology firms. A group of traditional colleges and universities are working on a way to get into the game.

The Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, the University of Washington, the University of California Davis, Irvine, and Los Angeles, and the University of Wisconsin Extension have joined forces on a project called the University Learning Store. Still in its initial stages, the concept is designed to create an alternative credentialing process through modular content, skills assessments, and services for students—such as tutors, coaches, and counselors—similar to programs being offered by Coursera and Udacity, according to a report in Inside Higher Education.

The group wants to be able to offer students different products from a variety of providers through the University Learning Store. Online content will include courses where instructors interact with students through the material, just like current online courses but for a shorter period of time. There will also be direct assessment through tests, papers, and projects, along with courses that award microdegrees for proficiency in job-related soft skills.

The University Learning Store would also be based on the “freemium” model where some content is free but students would also have to pay for some services. Assessment, tutoring, and other support services would be fee based.

Badges Part of CBE Degree Program

Competency-based education (CBE) matches workplace skills with a formal degree program, normally using digital badges to confirm the skills and abilities a learner has acquired. Brandman University, a private nonprofit institution, is helping its students use the badges they earn through its online CBE program more effectively.

Brandman partnered with Credly, an online platform for managing the credentials, to provide students with a way to share badges. The badges link back to the issuing source and deliver data about the criteria and issuer, giving the credential context for LinkedIn profiles, talent-management systems, e-portfolios, social networks, online communities, and websites.

“Employers inform us that there is a need to validate the skill set of business students and graduates,” said Gary Brahm, chancellor of Brandman University, in a press release. “Digital badges will arm our students with a form of professional capital that has immediate value in the workplace.”

Brandman is approved by the U.S. Department of Education to award financial aid to CBE students and is the first institution to issue digital badges certifying skills as students work through their degree-based program. It uses the Credly Enterprise edition, a cloud-based platform to manage and display the badges.

Digital Dominates Campus of 2023

Eight years from now, today’s fourth-graders will be finishing up high school in preparation for their higher education experience. The campus classroom will be much different by then, in the view of several experts interviewed by eCampus News.

For starters, they think more students will arrive on campus with a number of college credits already under their belts, thanks to more Advanced Placement courses and partnerships with colleges near their high schools. That’s assuming students even need to show up on the physical campus.

“The average student, an admittedly fluid term that will be even harder to define a decade from now, will likely take some courses on a traditional campus, but also an equal mix of online courses, flipped or blended courses, and massive open online courses (MOOCs),” wrote Jake New.

Some—possibly many—traditional universities may go out of business. The Clayton Christensen Institute, founded by a notable Harvard business professor, puts the bankruptcy rate at 25% to 50% of universities by 2030. Those that survive will have to reimagine graduation requirements, breaking the normal 15-week courses into shorter, more focused learning segments that award certificates for successful completion to students who may never need degrees as long as they continue to update their knowledge and skills.

“Big data” systems and digital apps will also help colleges and universities track student progress, help those who are struggling with certain concepts, and steer others to the right courses.

Interest Building in Educational Badges

Digital badges are beginning to be recognized as the next "disruptive technology" in education, particularly at the K-12 level. Students earn digital credentials for showing academic content knowledge in areas that may not be measured by traditional assessment methods.

“Digital badges are essentially credentials that may be earned by meeting established performance criteria,” Angela Elkrody, a fellow at the Eastern Michigan University for Leadership at Counseling, told eSchool News. “The vision of a digital badging ‘ecosystem,’ that is, a loosely connected framework of badges designed by various authorizers for different purposes, is moving forward to realization.”

In such an ecosystem, a school could issue badges to students for the completion of a series of projects designed by the school or by a local business that shows competency in a related Advanced Placement subject. Assessments would be predetermined and a badge presented when the student can demonstrate the specific competency in the course.