Badges Pave the way for more Advanced Instruction

The Library Learning Services Digital Badges Team has used the Instruction Reboot time to critically examine our information literacy badges program, its role in foundational library instruction, and the efficacy of badges as a mode of teaching our students. We are not the only Penn State librarians working with digital badges, though. Colleagues in our subject libraries and at Penn State campuses around the state have implemented them in a variety of ways. Carmen Cole, Information Sciences and Business Librarian, shares here the ways digital badges have enriched her instruction for both resident and online IST students:

“In the 2018/2019 academic year, I piloted the use of our digital badges in IST 110: Information, People and Technology. My collaborator in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) was Dr. Christopher Gamrat (Chris), an expert in digital badging systems. Chris’s dissertation, completed at Penn State in 2017 through the Learning, Design, and Technology program, is entitled Digital Badging Systems as a Set of Cultural Tools for Personalized Professional Development. As an Instructional Designer in the College of IST, Chris also teaches for credit, both residentially and through World Campus.

To best suit the introductory-level curriculum of the IST 110 course, we chose the following badges for students to complete: Academic Integrity, Lionsearch: Getting Started, and APA Style Citations. In Fall 2018, for Chris’s residential IST 110S course, students completed the badges before attending the Libraries’ Open House. The intent was to expose students to the physical and virtual library during what was, for most enrolled in the fall seminar section, their first semester at Penn State. Integrated into the IST 110S curriculum is a series of talks given by visitors, including the liaison librarian. I am tasked with speaking about “academic integrity and library resources.” Although I have a set lesson plan for these sessions, assigning the badges prior to my visit allowed me to conduct more advanced instruction. The students were much better prepared to discuss academic integrity when presented with a series of scenarios tailored to IST. Also, Chris and I were able to create a paraphrase and citation activity based upon the skills students learned from the badges.

The students enrolled in Chris’s Spring 2019 World Campus IST 110 course were also required to complete the badges. I did not have the opportunity to perform instruction after assessing the Spring 2019 badges, but reading and commenting upon their open-ended responses was a good way for me to get to know World Campus students and make them more aware of my role in IST. In particular, there was a large military presence in the World Campus section, including students currently on active duty. Some of their responses to the open-ended questions, especially in the Academic Integrity badge, were strongly related to their service, something that helped me learn more about their unique circumstances and needs.

To gather general impressions of the badges and their effectiveness from the students, Chris and I modified an informal survey instrument provided to us by Dr. Victoria Raish (Torrie). Overwhelmingly, students in both sections considered the APA Style Citations badge to be the most useful and the Academic Integrity badge to be the least useful. The majority of students agreed that the badges influenced their work in IST 110 and other classes, and supported the use of the badges in future IST 110 classes. Assessing the badges allowed me to “know what I didn’t know” and engage more fully with each student when responding to their open-ended responses, something I never would have had time to do during a 50-minute, one-shot session. Also, it was interesting that many students, without being prompted to do so in the badges, connected their answers to the course content. I am fortunate to have an enthusiastic collaborator in the College of IST, and, with the support of Library Learning Services, aim to integrate the badges into additional IST 110 courses in the future.”

Many thanks to Carmen for sharing her experiences! 

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