The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access hosted an event for the museum community entitled, “Rewarding Museum Participation and Learning: New Approaches,” which was broadcast live from the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum on Tuesday, April 23, 2013.

Claudine Brown, Assistant Secretary for Education and Access opened the program and introduced guest speaker Maxwell L. Anderson, the Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), who discussed “Changing the Currency of Museum Membership: Participation v. Cash.” The DMA uses BadgeOS to power their groundbreaking “DMA Friends” program.

Following Anderson’s presentation, Jonathan Finkelstein, Director of the BadgeOS Project, CEO of Credly and founder of LearningTimes, gave an overview of digital badging programs that reward achievement and the latest trends in this outreach strategy.

Three Smithsonian educators then discussed how badging advances the learning objectives of their Smithsonian units:

• Stevie Engelke, Director of Programs, Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access
• Amy Homma, Manager of Digital Learning Programs, ARTLAB+
• Caroline Payson, Director of Education, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

In addition to being the platform behind the DMA Friends program, BadgeOS also powers a wide range of Smithsonian badging and achievement recognition initiatives across 19 Smithsonian museums and galleries.