Digital badges have a history founded in physical badges, such as those established by Baden-Powell with cub scouts. Individual cub scouts would work towards different cloth badges by performing a task or displaying a skill. The end result was that each badge would be displayed on their uniform to help communicate this success amongst peers (Scouts Australia 2017). More recently, digital badges have been integrated into mobile games and wearable fitness monitors like Apple Watch ™ and FitBit ™, Achievement structures have been built into gaming consoles, such as the Microsoft XBox™ (Elliott, Clayton et al. 2014, Davis and Singh 2015).
The focus of this paper uses a first year undergraduate Bachelor of Nursing topic at an Australian university. More specifically, this paper will report on the students’ interests around playing games, their digital badge history, and their self-reported attitudinal interest to use digital badges to enhance their learning (Gibson, Ostashewski et al. 2015, Foli, Karagory et al. 2016).
Methods:
Ethically approved validated pre and post surveys were developed and administered to three consecutive cohort of first year nursing student
Data was collected over three years: 2015 with 32% of students (n=67), 2016 with 16% of students (n=44) and 2017, where 22% of students (n=86), expressed an interest in using digital badges to enhance their learning. This presentation seeks to create a snapshot to explain who are interested in digital badges as a motivational reward for being prepared to attend weekly face-to-face classes using online activities and resources.
Results:
Overall the results indicate that students who earned digital badges feel more prepared and confident about entering the classroom to commence the set content. The results of this research hold relevance for nursing educators and educational designers seeking to integrate digital badges into motivational teaching practices. Further it suggests the importance of evaluating the role digital badges play as a motivational game based learning design element.
Conclusion:
This study has shown that some first year nursing students were motivated to collect digital badges at assist their weekly preparation for their science laboratory activities. The results from this study have implications for undergraduate nursing education internationally. As nurse academics worldwide strive to provide high quality programs they now have evidence that digital badges is another strategy to scaffold and motive student learning.