Undergrad but Not Under-experienced:

Employing Undergraduates as Instructional Design Assistants to Support the Creation and Use of Open Badges

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Image by photosteve101. Used under CC BY License.

Daniel L. Randall & Richard E. West

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 -

Open Badges

Webmaker Open Badges

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

Mozilla Backpack

Backpack Collection

Multiple collections can be created.

Collections can remain private or can be made public and shared.

Open Badge Information

Google Sites

PersonalTech

Choice1

Choice2

Choice3

IPT EdTec Badge System

Student selected Internet Communication Technology

Student selected Multimedia Technology

Student selectedPersonal Technologies

AdditionalConcepts

MobileLearn

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

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.

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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.

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Scaling Our Badge System

• Expand offering of badges

• Create badges that were discipline specific

• Allow more people to submit badge projects

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Undergrads as a Potential Solution

Undergraduates can serve as:

• Undergraduates Teaching Assistants (UTAs)

• Instructional Design Assistants (IDAs):

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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).

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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

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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).

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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

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Our IDAs and their Qualifications

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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

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

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LoggerPro by Non-IDA

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IDA LoggerPro

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IDA LoggerPro (closeup)

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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

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Discipline Specific Badges by IDAs

English

Physics

Biology/Anatomy

Chemistry

Physical Education

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General Badges by IDAs

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Launching soon:Plickers, KaHoot, EdPuzzle, ClassCraft

Badge Totals

Total badges by IDAs: 26

Non-IDA badges: 38

68% increase

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IDA Job Aids

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• Badge Creation Spreadsheet

• Badge Creation Guide

UTA Job Aids

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• Grading Spreadsheet

• Grading Guide

Benefits to IDAs

• Experience designing instructional activities

• Exposure to new technologies

• Increased skills with technologies they are already familiar with.

• Resume builder

• Earn badges

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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.

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?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