Supporting Self-regulated Learning through Digital Badges: a Case Study

Self-regulated learning (SRL) takes place when individuals plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning experiences. Learning assessment plays a crucial role in this process because it provides an excellent basis for the above three phases of SRL; however, the identification, design and implementation of meaningful assessment activities is not easy and some technological affordances for an SRL-sensitive assessment design still need to be explored. Although Digital Badges are already considered an instrument that could provide good answers to the complex problem of assessment for learning, their potential for SRL support is rather under-explored. This paper puts forward a proposal on the role that Digital Badges can play in supporting SRL. The proposal consists in a "badge ecosystem", developed for a course on "Scientific Information for Biomedical Research", aimed at differentiating among different levels of competence to facilitate learners in making better informed decisions on how to go about in their learning process. The conclusions discuss the expected advantages and shortcomings of the proposed ecosystem.