This study addresses student attitudes about open badges (after having been required to earn badges as part of their course work or having earned them through the library) and their desire to earn additional optional badges offered across campus. Research has presented conflicting evidence about the potential effect of open badges on student motivation, usually studying students who have had no previous experience with open badges. However, research has also found that open badges are still largely new and unknown for many people, which may affect initial motivation to earn badges. For this reason, our study considered the potential impact that prior exposure to and earning of open badges could have on students' attitudes toward open badges. Our findings are that student motivation to earn additional badges is increased after prior exposure depending on the badge design, badge implementation, and student understanding of how open badges function. We found that students who earned badges through the library software training program had the highest motivation, followed by Ed Tech class students.

In this dissertation, the creation and iterative improvement of an open badge system for an undergraduate preservice educational technology course is examined through 3 journal-ready articles. In article 1, we detail the design, development and implementation of the badge system and demonstrate how an open badge system could help meet the challenges facing the course. Several future design implications are identified, including how to scale the badge system while maintaining quality control and how to achieve financial sustainability. Future research implications include determining if awarding badges provide students with additional motivation and what employers perceptions of badges might be. Article 2 examines how undergraduate instructional design assistants (IDAs) could be used to affordably scale our badge system. External reviews determined that IDAs can create badge rubrics at a similar level as instructors, allowing us to create far more badges than we could without their help. IDAs also reported that the experience benefitted them by giving them increased technology skills and room for professional growth. While most of the IDAs were excited about the benefits of open badges, none chose to share their badges with prospective employers, largely due to concerns about how to display them or about whether principals would understand their value. In article 3, we look at employers perceptions of open badges. We emailed 1 of 2 forms of a survey to 577 principals and assistant principals in 5 school districts. Form A used wording about digital badges while form B used the term microcredentials. We compared the results of the surveys using the Mann-Whitney U test and the sign test. We also qualitatively examined the results of the open-ended questions using constant comparison analysis. We found that using the term microcredential instead of the term digital badge does not have a significant effect on employers perceptions on open badges. However, providing a small amount of instruction regarding the affordances of open badges does produce a statistically significant difference in the perceived value of open badges. Employers see the most value in achievement and capability badges. Most employers believed badges would be useful in the hiring process, but many worried about the challenge of having too much data. Finally, we found that many employers think that badges could be useful in professional development.

Competency-based education (CBE) has become well-accepted as a powerful way to personalize learning. Today's advanced technologies have enhanced CBE even further. Practitioners in the field are seeking means to take advantage of technology to increase CBE's effectiveness and efficiency, especially for adult learners. Microlearning and digital open badges are two examples. This dissertation, which consists of three articles, aimed to provide more in-depth insights into the two innovative approaches. The first article is a literature review of the current understanding of microlearning. While microlearning is commonly defined as breaking down learning into manageable bite-size chunks, the review of the existing literature identified key principles for effective microlearning while also suggesting gaps in the research. Because of the limited number of peer-reviewed and research-based articles about microlearning, this literature review justified microlearning as a practical approach for workplace learning through CBE and digital open badges, which were relatively more well-studied. The article concluded with suggestions on how to design and facilitate effective microlearning experiences. The second and third articles from this dissertation resulted from an ongoing design-based research (DBR) project began in 2018. The study aims to contribute theories and practices about developing microcredentials and microlearning experiences to support self-directed learning (SDL) in educational settings. The project started with implementing competency-based microcredentials to train student instructors to teach software workshops at the Brigham Young University multimedia lab (Clement et al. 2020). It is in the second iteration to offer microcredentials to all students on campus through project-based assessments. Following the timeline of this project, the second article presents a case study that discusses microcredential use for student instructor training at the multimedia lab. We collected surveys and interviews from the current and former employees to determine if the badge-assisted training design has been meeting its intended goals for tracking skills. The result shows that while the badge-assisted training is effective for tracking skills and progression. It also provides insights to inform the next iteration's design. The third article is a product from the second iteration of this DBR project. The objective was to understand if and how microcredentials could promote continuous SDL. We collected 104 survey responses and 7 interviews from students who attended the software training workshops. Our findings suggest that marketing digital open badges as individual skills identification may be insignificant for supporting continuous SDL, but their stackable feature is. We aim to provide insights for practitioners to avoid similar pitfalls when implementing digital open badges through our reflections and suggestions.

This study aims to observe and understand what effect influence-earned and appointed badges have during Twitch streams and their interactions. Twitch is the most popular live streaming platform online and draws in a large number of content creators, with its primary draw being video game live streams. During video game live streams, streamers play a game and interact with viewers, of which there are different types depending on monetary contribution and status given by the broadcaster. Using ethnographic observation, two weeks’ worth of streams on a medium sized channel were viewed and later analysed with thematic structure, focusing on streamer-audience, viewer-subscriber, and the place of moderators and VIPs. The results show that while badges can delineate who is a regular viewer and who is not, beyond this they show little significance towards the positions of different audience members. Moderators and VIPs are shown to have more sense of regularity and more power over or exemption from chat limits. Additionally, those contributing monetarily are shown to get extra appreciation via on-screen alerts and triggered audio segments, making the streamer aware of their contribution. In chat, this earns them an additional badge, showing their level of contribution to the stream. This did, beyond recognition on stream, not show a longitudinal affect towards people who contributed monetarily. Overall, badges thus did not hold significant power, but observations raised more questions that inspire future research.

Les technologies modernes permettent d'avoir des renseignements toujours plus précis sur les interactions entre individus. Dans ce contexte, la collaboration SocioPatterns a permis de développer une infrastructure mesurant, avec une très grande résolution temporelle, la proximité face-à-face d'individus volontaires, portant des badges de radio-identification. Cette infrastructure a été déployée dans divers contextes, tels que des conférences scientifiques, un musée, une école ou encore un service hospitalier. La simple analyse de ces données représente un enjeu majeur pour l'étude de la dynamique humaine et soulève des questions aussi fondamentales que la recherche d'outils et de techniques d'analyse adaptés. Cette thèse présente la caractérisation statistique de la dynamique de proximité physique, mise en relation avec le contexte et les autres métadonnées disponibles, telles que l'âge, le sexe des individus, ou bien la structure de leurs réseaux sociaux virtuels. Si la structure des contacts diffère considérablement selon le contexte, les distributions empiriques des durées des interactions et entre interactions sont très similaires. Un modèle individu-centré, présenté dans cette thèse, propose des règles d'interactions microscopiques simples susceptibles de donner lieu à cette structure macroscopique complexe des temps d'interaction. Enfin, la caractérisation de la dynamique des contacts entre individus constitue une étape cruciale pour comprendre les mécanismes de propagation de maladies telles que la grippe dans une population. / Modern technologies allow to access to more and more detailed information on human interactions. In this context, the SocioPatterns collaboration has allowed to develop an infrastructure based on radio-identification devices, that records human proximity patterns at a fine grained resolution, among voluntary individuals. This infrastructure has been deployed in diverse contexts, such as scientific conferences, a museum, a primary school, or a hospital department. The mere analysis of these data represents a high stake for the study of human dynamics and raises fundamental issues such as the need of adequate tools and analysis techniques. This thesis presents the statistical characterization of physical proximity dynamics, put into relation with the context and other available metadata such as the age, the gender of participants or the structure of their virtual social networks. Although contact patterns considerably differ amongst the various contexts, the empirical distributions of interaction durations and of inter-contact times are very similar. An agent-based model, presented in this thesis, suggests simple microscopic interaction rules able to produce the complex macrostructure of interaction durations. In the last place, the characterization of contact dynamics constitutes a determining step for understanding spreading mechanisms of diseases such as the influenza. The human proximity data have allowed to analyze the level of information needed on contact dynamics for the elaboration of epidemiological models of contagion. Such models allow to better estimate the impact of public health strategies, e.g. the closure of school classes and targeted vaccinations.

[pt] Esta pesquisa teve a finalidade de entender a estratégia e a usabilidade dos badges no contexto da Web 2.0, nome dado a fase atual da Internet. Os badges são trechos de código disponibilizados por alguns sites para serem acoplados a outros, com a função de importar o conteúdo - gerado pelos usuários ou não - de maneira dinâmica. A hipótese levantada nesta pesquisa afirma que a inexistência de orientações claras sobre qual a melhor forma de comunicar a disponibilidade dos badges em um site e a falta de um conjunto de boas práticas para tornar o uso dos badges simples, fácil e, principalmente, viral pode ser um empecilho para a utilização deste recurso por um maior número de pessoas. Para comprovar esta hipótese a metodologia de pesquisa aplicada foi baseada em questionário enviado aos autores de blogs, diários virtuais de fácil atualização dentro do conceito da Web 2.0. A partir dos resultados obtidos é possível afirmar que estes usuários já usam badges, acreditam que os badges agregam valor aos seus blogs e são uma maneira de trazer conteúdo publicado (por eles ou não) para o seu blog. Além disso, ficou claro que a escolha de badges é descentralizada, ocorrendo principalmente nos sites onde o blogueiro navega regularmente e/ou em outros blogs que já usam badges. Também ficou evidente a necessidade de identificar os badges usando ícone e nome. / [en] This research had the purpose of understanding the strategy and usability of the badges in the context of the Web 2.0, name given to the current Internet phase. The badges are excerpts of codes that some websites make available to be coupled one with another, with the function of importing the content - generated by users or not - in a dynamic way. The given hypothesis affirms that the non existence of clear orientations about the best way to announce the availability of badges in a website and the lack of an amount of good practices to turn the usage of the badges simple, easy and, mainly, viral can be an impediment to the usage of this resource by a biggest number of people. To prove this hypothesis it was used a methodology of research based on questionnaire sent to the authors of blogs - virtual diaries of easy update inside the context of the Web 2.0. According to the results, it s possible to affirm that these users already use badges, they believe that badges aggregate value to their blogs and are a way of bringing published content (by them or not) into the their blog. It s clear that the choice of badges isn t centralized, occurring mainly in websites where the blogger usually goes to and/or other blogs that already use badges. It s also evident the necessity of identifying the badges using an icon and a name.

Gamification has previously demonstrated successful results when it comes to increasing the user retention rate in many different sectors. Non-profit charity organisations have for the last 10 years had a retention rate that is below 50%. This thesis investigates the possibility of increasing the user retention rate in the non-profit charity application The Life You Can Save(TLYCS) by implementing gamification. The gamification mechanic that was chosen for implementation was achievements. To measure understandability the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire was used, the four satisfaction scores of the questionnaire were measured with a number between one and seven. Sven represented the highest number and one represented the lowest number. All four satisfaction scores had an average number that was higher than 6. Because of the previously proved successful results of gamification and a usable implementation of achievements in the mobile application TLYCS the possibility of an increased user retention rate is assessed to be high.

This thesis was prepared in collaboration with Acreo (Research and Development Company) and OpenCare (IT Company). Its purpose was to design and develop a research testbed to enable context awareness in pervasive environments by modifying the MediaSense framework (EU Funded project) of Mid Sweden University. In ubiquitous environments, the proliferation of devices such as sensors, active badges, mobile phones, RFID and NfC tags enables the development of intelligent services towards new forms of pervasive applications. These intelligent services seamlessly gather context information and the benefits offered are in the provision of better services. The inspiration given by these intelligent services has meant that the focus of thesis has been on using these services in a healthcare application. The challenge is that the proposed testbed should address the intelligent delivery of health information to any host, anywhere, based on the user’s context. Further, context reasoning requires substantial computing power and smart devices have limited resources in terms of processing and memory, so, the testbed should enable smart communication to take place between these devices. The proposed solution satisfies the stated requirements by using a cloud infrastructure and a Distributed Context eXchange Protocol (DCXP). Any device on the internet that is DCXP capable may register with the architecture and share context information in an efficient way. In order to view context information, TV, smartphones, internet tablets and web interfaces have been provided for both the user and the health centre. By successfully addressing the requirements of the testbed, this thesis has enabled the creation of a pervasive healthcare application. Hence, this thesis concludes with the observation that the proposed approach for context awareness in a healthcare system has the ability to deal with the stated challenges.

This report covers the development of the web application Festing and the results and experiences which have been reached and learned during the process. The purpose of the study was to examine how the selling of patches could be both simplified and improved by using an advanced web application designed with focus on usability. Currently the patches are sold in a large but geographically and temporally limited market at Linköping University. The project was comprised of a case study and development of an application following the agile project framework Scrum. According to this the projects has been split up into four sprints after each of which a working product was delivered. This resulted in a usable web application with an intuitive design and multiple functions linked to the selling and buying of patches. Based on interviews, surveys and usability tests this web application is considered to have the long-term potential to take over the current physical market of textile patches. / Rapporten omfattar beskrivningen av utvecklingsprocessen för webbapplikationen Festing samt resultat och erfarenheter som uppnåtts och anskaffats under processens gång. Syftet med studien var att utveckla en avancerad webbapplikation av typ e-butik för att undersöka hur försäljningen av tygmärken kan förenklas och förbättras av en webbapplikation med fokus på användbarhet. Detta då försäljningen i dagsläget består av en stor men fysiskt och geografiskt begränsad marknad vid Linköpings universitet. Projektet har utformats som en fallstudie och utveckling av en webbapplikation enligt det agila arbetssättet Scrum. Arbetet har delats upp i fyra stycken olika sprintar där det i slutet av varje sprint ska ha levererats en fungerande delprodukt. Detta resulterade i en användbar webbapplikation med intuitiv design och flertalet funktioner kopplade till försäljning och köp av tygmärken. Utifrån intervjuer, enkätundersökningar och användbarhetstester anses denna webbapplikation ha potential till att på lång sikt kunna ta över den nuvarande fysiska försäljningen av tygmärken.

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