This morning, WCET (a membership cooperative of postsecondary education institutions, agencies and associations) launched the beta of their game+badges program, called Who's Got Class.
As I've previously written, badges for learning are gaining attention on many fronts. In higher education, interest is growing particularly around benefits that badge systems might provide for student engagement and student retention. Additionally, education innovators are exploring the use of badges as drivers for certification programs and other competency-based learning settings. (For a primer on badges for learning, you might be interested in this webcast I co-presented in March with John Bower of uBoost.)
With all these questions whirling around, WCET leadership felt a calling to explore the world of badges and games for learning by hosting this "sandbox" project. The purpose of Who's Got Class is to give participants a light-hearted personal experience of these emerging learning technologies, and to provide participants with a platform for collaborative evaluation of possible applications within higher education.
I am so pleased that WCET asked me to design this program, and to partner with the BadgeStack team at Learning Times to do the implementation. Now that Who's Got Class is going live, my role is shifting to gamemaster, which enables me both to participate in and to monitor the evolution of the experience. I will be blogging here frequently about Who's Got Class, looking at design and implementation considerations and a host of other things that contribute - or don't - to a successful game+badges for learning experience.
Participation in Who's Got Class is by invitation only. If you'd like to play with us, send an invitation request to [email protected]. We'd love to have you. Invitations will be sent when Who's Got Class goes public next week.
