I’ve been exploring the Grademark tools in Turnitin which includes comments and realized that they could that comments could maybe be….Badges.
Just to briefly describe the tool, Grademark allows instructor to drag comments onto a paper (like the well-known “¶” and “Awk.” comments of writing instructors. However, this tool allows instructors to create their own comments, and this is where badgification could come in.
Suppose I am teaching a linguistics course and want to reward the extra effort in a piece of linguistic writing. I could use light hearted comments to reward students for going the extra mile. For instance, if a student included non-English data with the correct accent marks or in an authentic script, they could get the “Script Master” badge, while those who record audio could get a “Podcaster” badge.
It’s not a full badge system, but it’s a way to leverage a feedback system to be a little more badge like.