Monthly Archives: January 2019

Announcement, Digital Badges

Digital Badges Sub Team Introduction and Goals

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As Anne Behler mentioned, Library Learning Services at Penn State is engaging in an instruction reboot. There are three main areas to this reboot. Each of these areas has a team supporting it. The digital badges team consists of Amanda Larson, Anne Behler, Emily Rimland, and Torrie Raish.

To provide some context for those who are unfamiliar with our information literacy digital badges, we have a website describing them. Our digital badges have been very successful and we reached the point were demand for the badges outpaced our supply in terms of resources and time. This instruction reboot is a perfect time for us to explore our digital badging program and look at concepts such as scale, sustainability, and capacity.

In particular, we are prioritizing the following tasks:

  • Identify key populations and classes for implementation;
  • Review content and identify outdated content as well as opportunities for new badges;
  • Establish collaborative plan across Penn State libraries;
  • Create a consistent approach and experience for instructors who are interested in using the badges;
  • Determine our threshold in terms of human and time resources;
  • Consider need for additional website presence;
  • Analyze research conducted around the digital badges;
  • Create a sign-up online form for people interesting in using the digital badges; and,
  • Establish a training system for use of the digital badges.

We have issued over 3,000 badges over the course of the past two years and get to participate with students in a flexible learning environment. The digital badges can be used in a completely online learning space or they can be used to flip the classroom in a residential instructional model.

Digital badges are a form of microcredential that recognizes learning in a variety of formats and amounts. Our digital badges consist of a mix of manually evaluated and automatically evaluated student submissions. The overall learning theory driving the badges is Connectivism. The digital badges always start with an articulation of prior knowledge and always end with a reflection or application of the student’s learning.

We have already learned some key best practices from using digital badges in formal coursework.

  1. Over the course of a semester, the badges are most successful when students earn one to four.
  2. It takes around three hours for one librarian to evaluate one badge for a class of 25 to 30 students.
  3. Students benefit from visual tutorials or descriptions on how to earn the digital badges as most are unfamiliar with this concept.
  4. To prevent student confusion as to when they will receive feedback, communicate expected evaluation times to them.
  5. Clarify expectations with instructors and spend time reviewing how the badges will be presented and earned in the course.

There are multiple digital badging systems that can be used in the creation and issuing of digital badges. At Penn State, we use badgesapp.psu.edu. This system complies with all Open Badging technical specifications and allows students to share their badges beyond Penn State.

We are very excited to have this opportunity to critically examine and review our digital badging system. The support and adoption rates we have experienced so far have exceeded our expectations and we look forward to more areas of unexpected success in the future!

Signing off for now,

Badging Reboot Team

Torrie, Emily, Anne, and Amanda L.

 

Planning

The Reboot Backstory

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In 2014, I attended the LOEX conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was a short trip – I went long enough to present and take in a few sessions. Little did I know that one of the sessions I attended would form the basis for one of the biggest projects our instructional team would undertake…
The room was packed for “Inquiry-Based Learning Online: Designing and Delivering a Blended and Embedded Information Literacy Program,” by Alan Carbery and Janet Cottrell from Champlain College. They told the story of the steps their information literacy program took to adapt when Champlain changed its entire gen. ed. program, a program the librarians had previously been fully integrated into. Alan and Janet talked about how the scope of their group’s work changed overnight, necessitating a drastic change in approach. They needed to take steps (quickly) to figure out the new situation at the university and then decide how they were going to (re)structure the library teaching program in order to deliver effective, in-time, teaching. It was a situation none of us envied but many of us could identify with; the room was glued to the speakers, excited to learn how this program had faced such a stressful situation and come out with an even better program one the other side.
And then Alan put up a slide that said, “DO NOTHING.” This was the portion of the presentation that caused my jaw to drop, and that I filed away in my brain as an incredibly valuable approach when applied in a timely and mindful manner. What he meant by “do nothing,” was not that the librarians shrug their shoulders and move on with things despite the changes. What he meant was that they should take one semester (for them it was a summer) to take a “teaching hiatus,” and focus on nothing but how to situate Information Literacy within the university’s new general education curriculum. So that is what the librarians at Champlain did. They put their teaching on hold, so that they could focus on their teaching. And they came back in the Fall with a new way forward that enabled them to reach their goals within the new curriculum model at the university.
So…I filed that idea away. It was incredible and inspiring…and I didn’t have any way to use it at that moment. Here at Penn State, things were growing and changing too, though. Library Learning Services, which had begun as a unit of two instruction librarians and two staff members, had reached a staff of twelve by 2018. The expertise of the group expanded as well – to areas such as open education, student engagement, learning design, and online learning. We had expanded our modes of instruction from just face-to-face teaching to include a growing digital badges program, engagement with the undergraduate research program, and many other modes and venues for inserting information literacy into the curriculum and experience for Penn State students. The curriculum landscape at Penn State University was changing as well, with general education having fully entered the scene in 2017.  By early 2018, there was much to consider, and Alan’s advice to start by doing “nothing,” came back to me.
I spoke with my boss and our fearless leader, Rebecca Miller Waltz, who encouraged me to do more digging. I called Alan Carbery, who was kind enough to spend time on the phone with me even though he was about to leave Champlain for a post in Ireland. I assembled my own list of the programs, topics, and practices we might consider during our own “hiatus” from teaching; I pitched the idea to my colleagues in Library Learning Services. They, too, were fearless in their consideration.
In May of 2018, we began planning what we now call the Instruction Reboot, so that when the time came in Spring of 2019 to initiate things, we would be ready.
I will talk in more detail soon about some of our considerations for the Reboot, and I’ll discuss the path we took to determining our areas of focus. Suffice it to say that we held many thoughtful conversations, made many lists, compiled several brainstorms, and started pushing ourselves to think big about what is important to our program, and to our students. And let me also say that this isn’t just a story about Rebooting our library instruction program; it’s a story about how one idea- no matter when it’s gained -can spark inspiration in another place and time. I’m grateful to our colleagues at Champlain for trailblazing with disruptive program design and for sharing their story back in 2014. Penn State 2019 thanks you!
Announcement, Strategy

Go Time!

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Happy New Year!

At this time when many are busy setting New Year’s resolutions and intentions – whether personal or professional – we in Library Learning Services are excitedly moving forward on the 2019 resolutions we set for ourselves with the Library Instruction Reboot! For us, it is Go Time!

So what’s happening? Just prior to the holiday break, our team gathered for one final pre-reboot meeting, and solidified our plans. We will be working in three strategic areas:

  • Assessing opportunities for working with distinctive populations.
  • Establishing what library support for foundational learners will look like through 2019 and beyond.
  • Creating a framework for the Penn State Information Literacy Badges Program.

Each strategic area will be tackled by a team of LLS colleagues, who will work to assess the landscape within their assigned area. The teams will work to identify opportunities and key partners, determine strengths and weaknesses of past practice in each area, and – most importantly – lay the framework for what our future work will be.

During the first two weeks of the Spring Semester, each group is holding a kick-off meeting, further developing their charges, and establishing the steps they need to take to move forward with their work. As they dig into the work, you’ll hear from each group at least once about their charge and where their work is taking us.

The Reboot journey is beginning!  Stay tuned here for weekly updates!