> Skip to content
FEATURED:
  • The Evolution of Race in Admissions
Sign In
  • News
  • Advice
  • The Review
  • Data
  • Current Issue
  • Virtual Events
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
Sign In
  • News
  • Advice
  • The Review
  • Data
  • Current Issue
  • Virtual Events
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
  • News
  • Advice
  • The Review
  • Data
  • Current Issue
  • Virtual Events
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
Sign In
ADVERTISEMENT
Overhauling Higher Ed
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Show more sharing options
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
  • Copy Link URLCopied!
  • Print

Grades Out, Badges In

By  Jeffrey R. Young
October 14, 2012
What If We Got Rid of Grades? 1
David Schwen for The Chronicle
What If We Got Rid of Grades

David Schwen for The Chronicle

Grades are broken. Students grub for them, pick classes where good ones come easily, and otherwise hustle to win the highest scores for the least learning. As a result, college grades are inflated to the point of meaninglessness—especially to employers who want to know which diploma-holder is best qualified for their jobs.

That’s a viewpoint driving experiments in education badges. Offered mostly by online start-ups, the badges are modeled on the brightly colored patches on Boy Scout uniforms but are inspired primarily by video games: Just as most video games offer ways for players to “level up” frequently, to keep them excited, most education-badge projects involve rewarding achievements more fine-tuned than passing (or acing) a course. In a remedial math course, for instance, a badge might be awarded for mastering a concept, whether “surface area” or “median and mode.” Or badges might certify soft skills not usually measured at all in college courses, like teamwork or asking good questions.

We’re sorry. Something went wrong.

We are unable to fully display the content of this page.

The most likely cause of this is a content blocker on your computer or network. Please make sure your computer, VPN, or network allows javascript and allows content to be delivered from c950.chronicle.com and chronicle.blueconic.net.

Once javascript and access to those URLs are allowed, please refresh this page. You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one, or subscribe.

If you continue to experience issues, contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com

What If We Got Rid of Grades

David Schwen for The Chronicle

Grades are broken. Students grub for them, pick classes where good ones come easily, and otherwise hustle to win the highest scores for the least learning. As a result, college grades are inflated to the point of meaninglessness—especially to employers who want to know which diploma-holder is best qualified for their jobs.

That’s a viewpoint driving experiments in education badges. Offered mostly by online start-ups, the badges are modeled on the brightly colored patches on Boy Scout uniforms but are inspired primarily by video games: Just as most video games offer ways for players to “level up” frequently, to keep them excited, most education-badge projects involve rewarding achievements more fine-tuned than passing (or acing) a course. In a remedial math course, for instance, a badge might be awarded for mastering a concept, whether “surface area” or “median and mode.” Or badges might certify soft skills not usually measured at all in college courses, like teamwork or asking good questions.

So what if colleges replaced grades with badges?

How to overhaul academe

  • Writing required—in every course
  • 2 presidents for every institution
  • The end of grades
  • Degrees with a price tag
  • Community colleges for real students
  • An NCAA that puts students first
  • High-tech college counseling
  • School at age 3; no more 12th grade
  • Truly global campuses
  • No more monographs
  • The new for-profit: a low-profit
  • Want space? Pay for it
  • Crowd-financed research
  • Faculty trained to teach
  • A tax for higher education

Read more | Send us your ideas

Erin Knight, leader of an education-badge project run by the Mozilla Foundation that provides a platform for students to display such badges on their Web sites, argues that grades shift students’ goals from learning to earning, because the stakes are so high when the result of an entire course is reduced to a single letter.

“If you tell people in a class to blog because they’re going to get a grade for it, they will do that,” she said in a recent interview in The Chronicle’s technology podcast. “But the types of interaction and participation you’re going to see are going to be very different than if it’s organic and people feel like they’re a community of learners and really want to contribute and have their own voice.”

ADVERTISEMENT

One key benefit of education badges could simply be communicating what happens in the classroom in a more employer-friendly form.

Grades shift students’ goals from learning to earning, because the stakes are so high when the result of an entire course is reduced to a single letter.

On Purdue University’s main campus, Bill Watson will try badges in an online course he’s teaching this month. (He’ll also give grades, as required by Purdue.) The course, on learning-systems design, offers a survey for education students covering various teaching styles. Mr. Watson, an assistant professor of educational technology, says students will be able to earn eight to 10 badges during the course, each badge representing a key learning objective. One badge might signal “case-based instruction facilitator,” for those who have shown they can apply the case-based model of teaching.

“Badges are in a way modules, and in a way you could build your own degree,” he says.

Purdue doesn’t offer a degree in making video games, for instance, but if it switched to a badge system campuswide, students could take courses with enough relevant badges to show an employer that they had focused on game design as they earned their degrees in computer science, Mr. Watson explains.

Badges could also show employers what type of worker a student is.

ADVERTISEMENT

Daniel T. Hickey, an associate professor of learning sciences at Indiana University at Bloomington, is experimenting with awarding badges for “collaborative engagement” and other forms of class participation.

He is asking students in a graduate course not only to comment on one another’s projects, but also to give an online thumbs-up to the most helpful comments from other students. He calls thse “stamps,” and they take the form of three ampersands in a row, together with the initials of the student giving the accolade. At the end of each week, the professor gives the student with the most stamps the collaborative-engagement badge, and at the end of the term, one student will win a badge for the most useful collaboration of all.

Mr. Hickey is using the online badge system set up by Mozilla, which means that students can display them in their online résumés or cite them on Facebook and Twitter.

He thinks the system will motivate students better than grades for such collaboration. “If you grade comments that students post, there are going to be a million of them, and no one’s going to read them, and they’re going to be boring,” he says. “I made a very deliberate decision not to attach grades at all to my badges. It’s finding a way to informally recognize and really to celebrate more social forms of learning.”

Sophia Bender, a doctoral student in the course, won the first collaborative-engagement badge. She has no plans to announce it to the world using social media, although she does relish the honor. “It’s just sort of that I’m proud of myself, and I don’t need other people to applaud me,” she says.

ADVERTISEMENT

Of course, if badges did replace grades, they could suffer their own kind of inflation. Or worse, a proliferation of badge types could make it hard for employers to sort through colorful but lengthy résumés.

If employers do end up hitting the “like” button on badges, they may challenge the need for traditional college degrees altogether. If a student can sew enough patches on his or her online résumé from courses at a variety of institutions, why stay at one place for four years just to get a certificate suitable for framing?

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Jeffrey R. Young
Jeffrey R. Young was a senior editor and writer focused on the impact of technology on society, the future of education, and journalism innovation. He led a team at The Chronicle of Higher Education that explored new story formats. He is currently managing editor of EdSurge.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Explore
    • Get Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Blogs
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Find a Job
    Explore
    • Get Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Blogs
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Find a Job
  • The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • DEI Commitment Statement
    • Write for Us
    • Talk to Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • User Agreement
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Site Map
    • Accessibility Statement
    The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • DEI Commitment Statement
    • Write for Us
    • Talk to Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • User Agreement
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Site Map
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Customer Assistance
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise With Us
    • Post a Job
    • Advertising Terms and Conditions
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
    Customer Assistance
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise With Us
    • Post a Job
    • Advertising Terms and Conditions
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Subscribe
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Institutional Subscriptions
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Manage Your Account
    Subscribe
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Institutional Subscriptions
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Manage Your Account
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2023 The Chronicle of Higher Education
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin