Abstract:

Students’ weak motivation to learn is the challenge of education at our secondary schools. Teachers often struggle with this problem by employing new technologies and methods in their teaching. Gamification, which means using game design elements in non-game contexts, seems to be more and more popular method. Several recent studies showed successful use of gamification also in educational process. One of the most straightforward-implementable game design elements is a virtual reward - a badge.

In this paper we present the research aimed at the evaluation of students’ satisfaction with using badges at school and their willingness to work in order to get badges. Study was conducted at two secondary schools in informatics classes, where badges were used as a complementary assessment. For our research we prepared the methodology of badges integration into the informatics classes and designed a set of badges that were used to award students for both the acquired knowledge and for their behaviour during educational activities in class. Since our research was conducted in two phases the originally proposed set of badges and also the methodology were adjusted according to the results of the first research phase.

Results of participatory observation showed that students not only accepted badges as a new form of feedback and motivation, but also take them for a reward itself. They often compared their collections of badges, competed in earning them, were asking for the badge after fulfilling some criteria and also urge the teacher to award another student a badge for their performance, while not harming pleasant atmosphere in classes.

Students’ opinion about badges was surveyed in a questionnaire, from which the following results were drawn. Nearly 85% of students perceive badges as a positive factor in the informatics classes. Most of them find badges motivational, interpret them as a reward or appreciation, they like the possibility to gain a special award for badges, etc. Only few students perceived badges neutral and even less of them did not like the badges. Students answered also the question which activities they were willing to do or how they changed their behaviour in order to earn badges. Nearly three quarters of students reported their changed behaviour or some additional activities done because of this award. They were searching for interesting facts in IT world, were more active at lessons, did optional homework, optimized their programming codes, etc.

Altogether, the outcomes of our research showed that badges, when properly used, can be attractive for students and students tend to be more active in lessons if they have a possibility to earn this virtual reward.

Keywords:

Motivation, assessment, gamification, badges.