Principal Investigator: Marcy Towns
CoPrincipal Investigator(s): Cynthia Harwood
Organization: Purdue University

Abstract:
This project will improve the assessment of undergraduate students’ hands-on chemistry laboratory skills through an innovative method known as digital badging. A digital badge allows faculty to create tasks (challenges) that students complete by uploading media or links that can be assessed by an instructor. Students will demonstrate how they meet learning objectives through authentic performances such as demonstrating and describing how to correctly use a pipet to measure a specific volume of liquid. This project will explore the relationship between student motivation and digital badging using expectancy-value theory, a specific theory of motivation. This work represents frontier research that will bring innovative assessment practices to the undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics community and will build evidence about effective pedagogical practices.

The relationship between student motivation and digital badging, a novel and innovative approach to improve and assess student’s hands-on laboratory skills, will be explored using expectancy-value theory, which focuses on a student’s expectancies in terms of knowledge, confidence, experience, and value to characterize the ways in which students interact with digital badges. The digital badge will allow faculty to create tasks (challenges) that encourage students to demonstrate how they meet learning objectives through authentic performances. Students will complete retrospective pre and post surveys pertaining to their knowledge, confidence, and experience as part of the badging process. These data will allow determinations to be made about the expectancy perspectives of the students. Value instruments will be developed and analyzed, which will allow the characterization of the ways in which students find badging to be useful, interesting, and attainable, as well as how much it costs in terms of time or stress. By combining the findings from these surveys, the relationship between motivation and badging will be elucidated.