Badges

I believe that badges are one of many plausible ways of improving educational experiences for future learners. I've looked at learning analytics on this blog previously, and that's another avenue for improving education. The beauty of badges is that they can be combined with other changes in education. Unless the methods of schooling change in a drastic way I can't imagine, badges can be included in the system. Badges recognize a learner's achievement and display it in a way for others to see. I think they will motivate students to learn better. Instead of cramming for a test, they'll study for the purpose of accomplishing something. I think it will also help because the reward is so close to the action. I was on a website and decided to get my first badge. I normally would have thought the test was a waste of my time. After all, I didn't really need it for anything. However, seeing something that I could earn motivated me to spend a few minutes going through the information and answering some questions. If I'm any kind of example, I'd say badges will be a powerful motivator for learners to study and excel.
Now a big question. Are badges assessments? That depends. I don't think they're tests that one would take in a controlled environment. However, I think they do assess a learner's skills. So my answer is yes and no. They aren't traditional assessments, but they do show what a learner is capable of. And they do so in a more realistic and reliable way than multiple choice tests.

Analysis

One of the phases in the process of instructional design is analysis. I think this is one of the more important phases. It's the first phase, after all, so it sets the stage for all the others. Meaningful time spent on this phase saves time later on. I think this phase would be difficult to skip. Even if someone gave a half-hearted effort in it at first, they wouldn't be able to do well in the later phases. The result would probably be them being forced back to phase one to do further analysis to implement in the later phases.
I'm currently taking a class on the introduction to instructional design, and in the second half of the term, the class will participate in a competition where we'll design a course that will be taught in the fall semester. There will be a lot of information we'll need in order to fully analyze the situation. We'll need to understand the context of the class to understand what kind of prior knowledge the learners might have and in what situation they're learning. We'll also need to understand the attitude the learners will likely have toward the material and instruction, since that will affect how it is presented. If the learners are worried about the material, they'll need information to give them confidence with early successes. If they're fairly confident, that isn't as necessary. As far as the details of the task go, I think the most important thing for us to know will be the constraints.