The Inspiration of Digital Badges in Digital Citizenship

As a kind of learning technology that supports learners' personalized learning and lifelong learning in the digital age, digital badges have the function of encouragement, certification and appraisal, and provide theoretical and practical enlightenment for the practice of digital citizenship. Investigations and discussions have been conducted concerning the basic elements of digital citizenship, but there are few correlational analyses between digital badges and digital citizenship. This paper first reviews the existing literature on digital badges and digital citizenship, and presents the basic concepts and research status of the two. Starting with the case of meta-literacy education, it explains how digital badges play a role in promoting digital citizenship. Then the paper describes a study that was based on the model of meta-literacy education, to explore the research and practice of digital citizenship. Finally, the trend of digital citizenship is discussed based on the comparison of digital badges research in China and overseas.