Designing Effective Digital Badges : Applications for Learning

Designing Effective Digital Badges is a hands-on guide to the principles, implementation, and assessment of digital badging systems. Informed by the fundamental concepts and research-based characteristics of effective badge design, this book uses real-world examples to convey the advantages and challenges of badging and showcase its application across a variety of contexts. Professionals in education, game development, mobile app development, and beyond will find strategies for practices such as credentialing, goal-setting, and motivation of their students.

"This is a must-read for badge system designers. The authors summarize key issues in designing digital badge systems in general and in four specific educational settings where badges are likely to be used. Importantly, they embrace a perspective on gamification and incentives that highlights potential pitfalls and helps designers avoid them. The chapters also reference a good deal of relevant research that will help guide further investigation into key issues." - Daniel T. Hickey, Professor in the Learning Sciences Program at Indiana University, USA

"Don’t even think about building a badge system until you’ve read this book. McDaniel and Fanfarelli have written a superb instructional guide that will make your brain relax when you start wrestling with the complexity of badge system design. They link together open credentials and serious game design in a way that few have tackled and do a knock-out job showing where both fields connect, creating a clear path forward for designers and their teams." - Sheryl Grant, Senior Advisor for Transformational Learning at OpenWorks Group, USA