Implementing a Badging System Faculty Development

Abstract

Badging can be used in higher education faculty development efforts to demonstrate accomplishments. Badges can also serve as a powerful motivator for some faculty seeking improvement and to demonstrate growth. This system can be connected to aspects important to the faculty role, including rank, tenure, merit raises, and demonstration of university and community service. Badging can also offer a powerful way to examine current faculty development endeavors, helping to determine effectiveness or return on investment.

Connecting badging with mentoring and peer review can be another way to incorporate badging into overarching faculty development. By tracking and displaying badges earned, mentors and mentees can make connections more easily, allowing for more specializing and “just-in-time” training. Teaching is a profession that thrives upon continual professional development; digital enterprises are getting into the game by developing micro-credentialing systems that offer the ability to organize, capture, credential, and share achievements of teachers across their careers (Digital Promise: Accelerating Innovation in Education, Educator micro-credentials. Retrieved June 25, 2015 from http://www.digitalpromise.org/initiatives/educator-micro-credentials#educator-micro-credentials, n.d.).

The authors will explain how badging can be applied in academic and non-academic settings; however, the focus is on preparing a university to use a badging system that is linked to faculty development and mentoring. The authors will offer a review of four current badging platforms. Ultimately, the authors will highlight models in which badging can be designed and implemented for the purpose of empowering and motivating faculty.