Luma Connection #52: Discussion Badges
Collaboration and connection are important for our social-emotional well-being. Importantly, Luma has conducted research and published the benefits for creating learning communities remotely. This year, Luma will provide specific strategies you can implement to connect learners remotely. We are calling these strategies our Luma Connections.
Teaching Tool: LumaLive®
This is Luma’s synchronous or same time meeting tool. This online tool allows learners to interact with each other to explore a topic and to discuss key concepts, share experiences, interact with each other, and to ask questions in real time. Interactions are in real-time and can be mentor-learner, learner-to-content, learner-to-self, and learner-to-learner.
Tip: Discussion Badges
Assigning discussion badges for online discussions can promote authentic engagement and intrinsic motivation to participate in the discussion. Consider creating virtual badges to give to learners for participating in online discussions.
Tips for creating and assigning discussion badges include:
- Be specific. Avoid creating generalized badges for participation, and create badges that align to specific criteria and discussion expectations, such as the active listening badge or the excellent elaborator badge.
- Frontload. When presenting the expectations and etiquette for discussions, introduce the corresponding badges.
- Be explicit. Explain and illustrate how learners can earn each badge. Provide examples, point out when learners earn a badge and call out what they specifically did or said to earn it.
- Make it a friendly competition. Make it a friendly competition to see who can earn the most badges or have learners aim to earn at least one of every badge type and earn prizes for doing so.
- Avoid revoking and overdoing it. Don’t take back badges for unrelated behaviors or future incidents as they can adversely affect participation and motivation. Avoid giving out so many badges, such as batch giving out badges, that it seems too easy and lowers the performance bar.
Find out how Luma can help you create discussion badges!
Did you know?
Luma® is an instructional design and learning company that can help you connect learners remotely while creating powerful learning communities. Give us a call at (574) 807-8148 ext 5 or email info@learnwithluma.com.
