Digital Badge Design Unit: My First PBL Experience

I'm the kind of teacher that takes the time to think through a lesson or unit and plan, but at some point you can't anticipate everything and just need to jump in!

This is precisely what I did with my first real PBL (project based learning) unit. Before the planning stages I read Setting the Standards for Project Based Learning and Implementing Project-Based Learning, then as I planned my unit I worked through the Project Based Learning Starter Kit, which was so helpful. Another great resource was the Buck Institute for Education's (BIE) website of resources.

So my first official PBL unit was a doozy, but hey go big or go home, right? I needed a way to assess my students' basic technology knowledge and skills and had been looking at using digital badges. As I contemplated designing a badging system that would entice students to earn them and be easily manageable, I thought who would know better then my students. I immediately started working with the resources above to create a PBL unit for my 8th graders that would have them designing the entire badge system. Here is my unit plan and my teaching and learning guide, both templates I tweaked from BIE's resources. 

The unit began with a solid start; I had planned well. I knew my students didn't know about digital badges and couldn't design a system without having a base knowledge of the kind of system we wanted to create. Using Schoology, I created a differentiated reading group activity where groups of students read and discussed a video or article about badging. 

Video and Articles My Students Read

I grouped students according to their reading level, provided them questions to answer, and required them to comment on their peers answers, to facilitate a conversation.

Instructions for Completing the Reading

Once the groups were done, all the students completed a whole class discussion in Schoology about what we needed to consider when designing our badge system.

Directions for the Whole Class Discussion

This was a great start, but my students were still unsure about what exactly we were creating, so we looked at models of badge systems. We looked at the Aurora Public School Badge System and a Schoology based teacher professional development badge system, designed by Brandi Miller. We then had a ton of discussion and captured our thoughts using Padlet, Google Docs, and more Schoology discussions. After a week of establishing our base knowledge and brainstorming which tech skills to create badges for, we got into groups and started our work.

Here was the tricky part. I have 3 classes of 8th graders and we wanted to all work together to create 1 badge system. To manage 90 students working on the same project I created a team of 3 project managers in each class whose job it was to manage groups and help me design the overall system pieces, like where would we house the system and what the process would be for submitting evidence and issuing badges. Each class also had 8-9 groups of 3-4 students, with a group leader. The group leader was the main contact to the project managers and the project managers were the main contact to me. I only worked with 9 students total, the project managers, and only jumped into working with a group if all other attempts by the students to work out conflict failed. This system worked well, allowed me time to get into group's work and give feedback and train project managers on how to manage groups and run meetings to check in with work progress and group dynamics.

Project Manager Running Group Check-up Meeting

Guidelines for Groups, List Generated by Students

During this 5 week unit, 8th graders were engaged all the way through the last week of school. We had amazing conversations about how to write instructions and create tutorials for the specific audiences of 6th, 7th, or 8th graders. Students deepened their understanding of using information and images ethically and steered clear of copyright or trademark infringement. They also demonstrated their complete understanding of basic tech content. But the best part of all....they took pride in their work and completely exceeded my expectations! 

Students Engaged in Designing Badges

I have a little bit of work to do to string together all the different pieces of our system, but they created outstanding resources for our 6-8th graders to independently learn and earn badges that will demonstrate their basic tech knowledge. This system will also help me pinpoint who knows what and allow me to better plan learning experiences and access tech skills, encourage students to become the teacher, and eventually turn over running the system to a team of students. My 8th graders successfully created 23 badges, each with 4-5 microbadges, and a variety of learning resources to help the earner learn. Here is just a small sample of what was created.

I know some of my colleagues thought I was nuts to tackle such a large scale project with 90 8th graders at the end of the school year, but this amazing work came about through the power of PBL. I'm inspired by the work my students did and look forward to implementing our new digital badge system in August.