I along with Brittany Johnson conducted a mixed-methods research project on Makerspace Workshop Badges: Student Perceptions & Uses of Informal Credentialing. The conference paper was presented at the 2022 International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces, at Georgia Tech, in November. The research is based on quantitative and qualitative DSC Badging data gathered between 2018 and 2021, along with survey (n=69) and qualitative interview data (n=15).

You can read the conference paper, or for a summary of the key finding, take a look at the infographic to the right. Both the anonymized qualitative and quantitative data are openly licensed and are available for other researchers to use in their research. If you’d like to see a video of my conference presentation, you can watch it on YouTube or in the embedded video below. Special thanks to Bailey Lehmann who created the infographic.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with digital badging or informal credentials at your makerspace. What has worked well for you? What have you changed over time to better meet the needs of your makerspace users? Please feel free to email me, or connect via Twitter.