 Thank you. Dr. Gibbons, you can now take over. Thank you. Thank you very much for the welcome and the opportunity to speak at OE Global this year. It's a fantastic opportunity. So in this session, what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you an overview of a case study into the design implementation and impact of digital open badges on a civil engineering degree at the Galway May Institute of Technology in Ireland. And this was part of a doctoral study which I undertook over the last few years. So just to give you a bit of context about GMIT, it was established in 1972. And it's a multi campus institute with five different locations in the Midwest of Ireland. It's multi disciplinary as an institute we have degrees in science technology engineering, hotel and catering and tourism business studies. So a wide range of disciplines at the institute would over 100 courses and offer and they range from apprenticeships to undergraduate degrees and postgraduate diplomas right the way up to doctorate level awards. We currently have about 7000 students in the institute with 700 staff and more recently GMIT also has badges. Now this goes back to about 2015 when I started to informally play around and experiment with badges, but it became more formalized in 2016 when I began my doctoral study into them. So that's what I'm going to talk to you a little bit about for today's session. So the context for the study was that in year one in construction, sorry in civil engineering there's a module called computer aided design. And that module can be considered quite difficult to learn its technical software. And added to that the year one student experience in general can be quite tough for students particularly if they're living away from home for the first time and things like that so there are issues in first year that are across the board. Historically civil engineering would have had a lord and desired retention rates can be quite a difficult and challenging course. So that was something that the Institute management identified and suggested that we should come up with creative approaches to increasing retention. So that's kind of really why I wanted to look at the use of digital open badges really. So let's start with three research questions the first one relating to what what do people actually think about digital open badges and I wanted to include a range of stakeholders here to keep it open. So I had students staff Institute management and employer. The second research question related to what can actually be done to enable participation in a scheme like digital open badging. The third question was well what difference to open up by just make what's the impact on learning be learning learner behavior and management and engagement in teaching practices so that was kind of the three main research questions behind this really. And I suppose it goes back to motivation. The third question there is arguably the most important one because it talks about motivation and amongst many many other things because it can be quite complicated complicated. But most other things motivation is a factor in retention and bearing in mind the context of the study was to see was there some way to boost retention. So the research was designed around a mixed methods approach using qualitative and quantitative analysis within a framework of action research over two phases. The first phase really looked at the perceptions of the four key stakeholders and as a result of that I was able to develop a starter pack of digital open badges to to implement. And in phase one I included the students both first and final year lecturing staff Institute management and an employer for multinational firm based in Galway, and the relationships between those four stakeholders were important to pick up on as well so there was a broad range of people involved in the study it wasn't limited to one particular stakeholder. And then the focus shifted to the implementation of the scheme itself and that was based on an open badge packed it was developed as part of the phase one findings. And in phase two I really focused in on the year one students because I wanted to measure the impact of the badges over one academic year with that particular cohort. And the employer came back in at the end of phase two as well for interviews for reviewing the scheme, but the primary focus on your and phase two was on the first year students. So this is how the digital open badge packed looked. There's a range of them here in total there were about 20 of them that are used. And I'm just going to give you a very brief overview of these now. This is kind of background detail that's covered in other videos that I've got available online as well but very briefly, I had some badges that were available for assessments where I need student getting over 80% and an assessment could get a badge. Then I had in the two milestone assessments in the in the module I gave a badge for the best academic performance so there was only one badge available to the whole class for that one. I also had improver badges for any student who showed a great improvement between two consecutive assessments, and I wanted to do that to make it a bit more inclusive for everybody. So that was available for students who didn't have the best in class performance and maybe didn't even have over 80% in their assessments, but if they're showing an improvement, it was to encourage them. And then I had the level up badges which were based on skills mastery so if a student undertook an assessment and felt that they didn't perform to the best of their ability for whatever reason, they were given a second chance at it. Now the grade from their original attempt was the grade that was officially shown under on the report, but this badge was available to reward students who went the extra mile to go and try to improve their, their own skills mastery within the computer a design software. I then had buddy badges which were available for peer not peer learning activities and the students were able to award those to each other based on nominations so if a student was helpful to another student, the student who was helped could nominate their friend for a buddy badge. And then I had mystery badges, and the mystery badges were set up in such a way to give myself a little bit of wiggle room in case I didn't quite capture everything that would be needed. So I put them in as a category that allowed me to introduce new badges during the course of the implementation. And one of the ones to come out of that was the attendance badges, badges for attendance and engagement so I'm going to just highlight the three badges out of the entire scheme that have kind of come out as being the most important really for future implementations. So the first one there is the attendance badge. So it clearly states that the badge is available for 100% attendance over the whole academic year in the computer a design module, and it outlines quite clearly that a student would have had 78 hours of class contact time with the software so if a consumer is looking at this badge potentially somebody looking at taking on a student for summer job would look at this badge and say well okay this student has good personal characteristics they've got determination and discipline to attend a class for the entire year. Plus they've actually got 78 hours of technical training, which might be useful for their summer job so in a potential employer can learn a lot more about student from this badge, then maybe what will come across in a great. In terms of what people said about that badge. Well, it was interesting that the Institute manager picked up on it and said that we have some very some very good students who are going to pass anyway. The implementation of the inclination there is that if they're very good they may not come to class because they think they're going to pass anyway. But she went on to say had they actually been attending they would have been a very good support for everybody else and maybe challenge the lecturers a little bit, which would have helped the whole class learn. This badge produces a mechanism to encourage people to come to class for an extra reward, even if they think they're going to pass the module easily anyway. So it means that the high attenders have a reason to come to class, and it did actually change the behavior the students reported changing the behavior to come to classes where they were on the fence a little bit, but the availability of this badge made them come to the class. The next second of the three important ones is the level up style badge. So with this one it talks about skills mastery for the software module, and it says that the recipient had to undertake extra work to improve on their performance in an assessment in order to take a second to master the skills and clearly outlines the type of skills that were involved in that assessment. So again a consumer of this badge, again a potential employer can clearly see what was involved in the assessment it's very open in that sense. So anybody outside of the Institute can click on this badge and see exactly what's involved in that assessment. It makes the note that no change in grade is associated with this badge that their first attempt is the one that shows up on their official grade because that was obtained in an exam situation. But it does show that they're motivated to improve their skills, even when a great reward is not available. So what do people say about that. Well the employer in the study said that the individual who takes that on knowing that his original grade on paper doesn't change, but he knows himself he'll improve. I think that's really good and I'd be looking out for that individual. That's the individual I want working in this organization. Now what I think is interesting about this is that the employer when asked who did he want working for him didn't say I want the person with the best grade. They didn't say that they wanted the top performing student in the class. He said he wanted a student who showed this type of self determination and reflection abilities to act on lessons learned. And it was those characteristics that the employer wanted but of course those characteristics don't normally get captured in a final grade. And this is where the badges open up an entire scheme and mechanism for students to be able to tell the story of their life as a student beyond what a grade might show. And the last of the three badges that badge types I think that are important for people to maybe consider for future implementation is the buddy badges because they relate to peer assisted learning. And again there's quite a long description there which you can look back on on the slides they are available. You can look back and read it in your own time but essentially this badge rewards peer peer learning and collaboration amongst the students where if a student has helped that person can then nominate the helper for this badge so it gives a student some kind of an extra reward for being helpful in class. It doesn't get captured in a grade a lot of these things don't get captured in a grade but this is the evidence then that a student can say look I was helpful in class here's the proof of it. So what do people say about that well the Institute manager said that engagement is maybe more important than attendance and that's why she liked the mentoring or peer learning one. And she thinks that as a lecturer, sometimes students completely chewing out because they're tired, but as soon as you put them in groups and get them to work with their peers they're suddenly engaged again and that whole peer thing is very very important. So that's what the manager said about this type of badge. So let's give the students a bit of a voice in this now as well of course because they're an important stakeholder in the whole scheme to. And I thought this was particularly interesting where the students said that they're able to take information in and process it and share it amongst themselves, and they're acknowledging that the way that they learn something might be different to the way they understand it. So being able to take it in, turn it around and show it to your colleague in a way that they'd understand it, to be able to use that information again is very helpful to somebody. So here we have students working actively in a social constructivist way to actually digest information, re re re re jig it in a way that their colleagues may be able to understand it a bit more easily. So that's a fantastic tool and a mechanism to encourage peer learning. So that's how the badge scheme looked, as I said there were about 20 badges in total but I won't go into every single one of them in detail, I've kind of highlighted the three most important ones as I see it there. Some of the key findings from phase two then some of the key findings from phase two are that all stakeholder groups recognized that there's multiple values in the badges, a total of 13 roles have been identified for them. Seven enablers for participation have been identified and I think that enabling participation is vital. The badges are generally seen as a positive addition to the module I think the figure is 86% of the students involved in the scheme said they liked obtaining the badges and you know it's important to have something that the students like. The students report to changing behavior as a result of the badges and particularly that's relating to coming into class, so their engagement has been incentivized for them to come to class and attend. And motivation has also increased significantly in terms of interest and enjoyment in the course, and certain badge types the three I've mentioned have been important for I've been identified has been important for future implementations. So, these are the 13 roles that were identified, I'm not going to go through each one of them in any level of detail here but I wanted to include them in the slides so that we can use it as a discussion piece later on or separately if anybody wants to come back and talk about those in more detail. I do want to talk about is the enablers for participation because this is where the open kind of approach comes into it. So I think it's important to have consultation with all stakeholders at the design stage it just gets by in. And it also puts the idea of badges on the map because prior to my study digital open badges hadn't been used at my Institute so nobody knew what they were about really consulting with students before and after the implementation I think is vital because it gives you a chance to to gauge any time. And it also allows the students to review and help you to modify as we go along, ensuring the students have an opportunity to obtain some digital badges. So don't make them all about assessments. Okay, you know, if they are all about assessments don't make them all for just the best person in class. It's more inclusive to include ones that are even for the people who are, you know, just hovering in around the past fail. If you can kind of encourage them in any way and give them a little bit of confidence using the digital badges then that's important to include so don't kind of exclude people who are not the top achievers. Allow students to make peer nominations so that allows them to have a level of control over the system and involvement in it gives them a bit of ownership and include a variety of ways don't make them all about assessment. It makes some of them about things like levelling up and the attendance and the peer learning and things like that so it's not all about a single mechanism. Making sure that students have control over what they do with the open badges afterwards is important but also allowing them to control which badges to go for. Nobody, nobody was forcing the students to do any particular thing or act in any particular way during the scheme. They were able to make choices for themselves as to which badges to aim for. And then at the end reviewing and modifying as required. So just in terms of motivation really quickly I use two measures one of them was to achieve my goal theory. And this was to identify the type so intrinsic versus extrinsic really and no significant change was found over the trial because they were all coming in with relatively high levels of intrinsic motivation throughout so it was difficult to measure any improvement because it was all very high to begin with. And the second measure then was the intrinsic motivation index which measures the level, the extent of it, not so much the type of the extent. And with this one I was able to show a significant increase in intrinsic motivation due to interest and enjoyment and minor and not statistically significant increases in intrinsic motivation due to perceived choice and usefulness of the module. So, you know there's definitely a motivational increase that was measured as a result of the badges. So was it a successful if we go back to the three main questions about perceptions and roles while I was able to identify 13 roles. Some of them overlapped between stakeholders but lots of value has been identified so I'm calling that a success. The second research question was about the processes and practices that enable participation in the scheme. So I was able to identify seven different ways that I could enable participation in this three badge types have emerged as being important for future implementation so I'm calling that a success. And finally, did the badges make any difference in terms of learner motivation and engagement, while significant increases in motivation due to interest and enjoyment were found. So I'm calling this incentivize and reward behavioral change to engage particularly around peer learning and attendance, and a range of badge types can easily fit into practice, any of these can be chosen as a starting point. There's, there's no right and wrong when it comes to that but essentially, I've trialled numerous different types of badges here and many of them to can easily fit into your practice they're not difficult to fit in so I'm calling that a success as well. Finally, I just want to say thank you for listening. All of the slides are available, but there are a number of different ways for you to easily contact me if and when you want to learn a little bit more about it so thank you very much for listening. Thank you very much, Wayne. Well done. It's an accomplishment really and I would like to, I think that we have time for one or two questions so I would like to start right away there was a question from and there have been quite a few complimentary remarks in the chat window so I do encourage you to have a look at them after the session even, especially like the body badge system too. But there is a question from Eric who says how did you, who asks, how did you measure a success of the badges, did student performance or presence increase? Yes, so I measured the success of the badges, primarily around the motivation, because I was able to, able to kind of show a link between motivation and retention. Now I didn't actually measure retention because it's such a complex item. I wanted to focus on one factor on that which was the motivation. So I measured the motivation using a couple of well tested survey tools around self-determination theory, the intrinsic motivation and achievement goal theory. So my measure of success in terms of quantitatively was using those measures for motivation. All right, thank you very much. Eric, I hope that this answers your question, but you know how to get out of range if you have additional questions on your end. Sorry, I just spotted on Eric's chat there. He mentioned about creating a mentor award. One of the mystery badges that I included was a mentoring badge, so I'd be quite happy to talk to Eric separately about that as well. That was very successful. And that was sponsored by an employer who got on board with it as well. Right, thank you. And then the last question is from from Gino here. Did student engagement with the badging process involved development of any competencies required in order to do so? Did student engagement with the badging process involved development? No, I created an onboarding badge at the very beginning, which allowed me to demonstrate the mechanism for receiving and earning and sharing a badge. So all of the students were given a little bit of training and how digital badges actually worked. But in terms of developing competencies, more broadly, no, because I tied my competencies with a pre-existing module that was already there. So I didn't have to create new learning outcomes or anything like that. I was able to map the badges against a pre-existing module. So it was quite an easy fit in that sense. Thank you very much, Wayne. And I think that's, we are now out of time. So thank you very much for your contribution. Congratulations on completing your doctoral research. And thank you very much. This very useful system of badges. And I would also just like to point all the participants to the link that I've just shared in the chat window, which contains all of the useful resources that Wayne has been speaking about. It has got links to his slides. It's got links to more resources about the digital badging system and even his dissertation. So I encourage you to visit those and to also continue those conversations with Wayne directly on that space. So thank you very much, Wayne. And thank you very much. This concludes the segment of presentations here. We are going to take another five minutes as a break now, and then we are going to continue with the additional three presentations in this segment. So thank you very much to all of you for your active participation. And thank you to all of the presenters again.