Evaluating the Use of Open Badges in an Open Learning Environment

This paper reports on our ongoing research around learning analytics. We focus on how learning analytics can be used to increase student motivation and the use of badges as a way to aggregate learning activity being a representation of their goals and progress along the course. The context of this work is an open learning environment, based on wikis, blogs, twitter, an activity stream mash-up and an open badges system. Our evaluation analyses perceived usefulness and usability of the system, as well as the impact on student motivation. Our results indicate that badges are useful to motivate students while activity streams have the potential to activate students.