At AECT 2015. A big challenge in open badging is how to sustain the work involved in creating, reviewing, and issuing badges. This presentation shares our solution using undergraduate, trained instructional design assistants.

1. Undergrad but Not Under-experienced:
Employing Undergraduates as Instructional Design Assistants to Support the
Creation and Use of Open Badges
BYU
Image by photosteve101. Used under CC BY License.
Daniel L. Randall & Richard E. West

2. Merit Badges and Digital Badges
Boy Scout Merit Badges
Digital Badge
- Acknowledge accomplishment
- Display skills gained
- Motivation
- Enable feedback/teaching from
adult mentors
Typically not sharable -
Acknowledge accomplishment -
Motivation -
Gamification -
Enable feedback on specific skills -

3. Open Badges
Webmaker Open Badges
- Uses Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI)
- Criteria and Evidence links
- Display badges via web
- Motivation

4. Mozilla Backpack

5. Backpack Collection
Multiple collections can
be created.
Collections can remain
private or can be made
public and shared.

6. Open Badge Information

7. Google
Sites
Personal
Tech
Choice
1
Choice
2
Choice
3
IPT EdTec Badge System
Student selected Internet
Communication Technology
Student selected
Multimedia Technology
Student selected
Personal Technologies
Additional
Concepts
Mobile
Learn
Internet
Safety
Copy
right
iMovie
Lower level badges are not
issued for these projects
Project level badge not
issued for these
additional concepts
Educational
Technology
Course
Level Badge
Project
Level Badge
Lower
Level Badges

8. Rigor of Badge Creation
• Quality control is required during the badge creation process.
• Maintaining quality requires ensuring that new badges are
developed according to the core philosophy of the badging entity.
• The other major challenge is ensuring all elements of the badge
creation process are completed. These include:
– Rubrics and checklists
– Instructional materials
– Badge Images
– Any technological components.
BYU

9. Rigor of Badge Assessment
• Assessment process should provide learners with specific,
formative feedback that allows learners to reach the level of
mastery.
• This is not only important for learning, but also gives the badge
more credibility as a legitimate credential (West & Randall, in
press.).
• Very time intensive to provide quality feedback, particularly
because:
– many skills can best be assessed through human graders
– difficult to scale and maintain quality in a badging system.
BYU

10. Scaling Our Badge System
• Expand offering of badges
• Create badges that were discipline specific
• Allow more people to submit badge projects
BYU

11. Undergrads as a Potential Solution
Undergraduates can serve as:
• Undergraduates Teaching Assistants (UTAs)
• Instructional Design Assistants (IDAs):
BYU

12. Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs)
• UTAs typically perform more clerical work than graduate
assistants (Weidert, Wendorf, Gurung, & Filz, 2012)
• UTAs who have been given more responsibilities have
demonstrated an ability to perform these tasks well (Mendenhall &
Burr, 1983; Weidert et al., 2012).
• Institutions who utilized UTAs provided extensive training,
including seminars, weekly meetings, and personal mentoring
(Hogan et al., 2007; McKeegan, 1998; Mendenhall & Burr, 1983; Weidert et al., 2012).
BYU

13. Undergraduates as Implementation Assistants (IAs)
55 IAs hired to help university implement a new LMS
• Trained Faculty on use of the new LMS
• Helped faculty migrate courses
• Rebuilt some courses
• Providing ideas for course improvement when asked by
professors
IAs work by the Numbers
• 1,242 faculty and staff received training from IDAs
• 11,000 phone calls
• 6,000 emails
BYU

14. Undergraduates as Implementation Assistants (IAs)
Johnson (2014) noted:
“because we were able to hire as many students as we
did, we were able to support more faculty members
than we could have had we hired more [full-time
instructional design] consultants” (p. 84).
BYU

15. UTAs and IDAs
• Cheaper, so we can hire more of them
• Increased manpower = more grading
• Students with expertise in specific subject-areas
can help design badges for those subjects
• IDAs can also help with designing general topic
badges
• Updating rubrics and creating tutorials
BYU

16. Our IDAs and their Qualifications
BYU
Nicole Westenskow
•English teaching
•Editor
Janelle Frossard
•English teaching
Jerika Newitt
•Physics Teaching
•Physics TA
•MIT Intern
Emily Goates
•Science Teaching
•Botany Research Assistant
•Plant Diversity TA
Danielle Martin
•Health Education
•Chemistry

17. Training IDAs and UTAs
• Both groups receive detailed instructions and
mentoring
• Job aids for both designing and grading
• Weekly meetings, reviews, and continued mentoring
• Easy access to instructors and designers when they
need help
BYU

18. LoggerPro by Non-IDA
BYU

19. IDA LoggerPro
BYU

20. IDA LoggerPro (closeup)
BYU

21. LoggerPro Compared
IDA
• Required students to learn
and use all significant features
of the program
• Provided more detailed
instruction
• Generated 5 rubrics, one for
each discipline
• Provided sample data for
students to use
Non-IDA
• Required students to use only
the most basic features
• Instruction was less detailed
• 1 generic rubric for all
disciplines
• Did not require the use of
features that required sample
data
BYU

22. Discipline Specific Badges by IDAs
English
Physics
Biology/Anatomy
Chemistry
Physical Education
BYU

23. General Badges by IDAs
BYU
Launching soon:
Plickers, KaHoot, EdPuzzle, ClassCraft

24. Badge Totals
Total badges by IDAs: 26
Non-IDA badges: 38
68% increase
BYU

25. IDA Job Aids
BYU
• Badge Creation Spreadsheet
• Badge Creation Guide

29. UTA Job Aids
BYU
• Grading Spreadsheet
• Grading Guide

32. Benefits to IDAs
• Experience designing instructional activities
• Exposure to new technologies
• Increased skills with technologies they are already
familiar with.
• Resume builder
• Earn badges
BYU

33. Future Work
• Verify that the badges created by IDAs are on par
with other badges
• Determine the quality of feedback and grading
done by UTAs
• Further examine the experiences of IDAs and
potential benefits they receive.
BYU

34. ?
Contact us with Questions
Thank You
Daniel L. Randall
dan.randall26@gmail.com
www.danrandall.com
@dan2randall
Richard E. West
rickwest@byu.edu
www.richardewest.com
@ richardewest