To Nudge or To Badge ... that is the question? Exploring two innovative approaches for addressing student engagement in higher education
Alice Brown & Melissa Fanshawe, University of Southern Queensland
As two academics from a regional university with significant experience in online teaching, we have often aired our frustrations about the fact that, while our courses may adopt innovative teaching strategies, and we thought our content was interesting, not all of our students engaged with the course materials. This worried us because we know that engagement is critical to student success and course completion (Martin and Bolliger, 2018). Unsurprisingly, the recent Universities Accord Interim Report (at 83) also emphasised the importance of a ‘more targeted approach to online delivery, designing content and learning activities with digital and hybrid delivery in mind’ to assure more inclusive and higher quality learning experiences.
In efforts to address these concerns, we have both been trialling different technologies over a number of years. Alice chose to use ‘nudging’ and Melissa used ‘badging’ to encourage students to engage in coursework learning.
Alice explains nudging
Nudging has been used across a broad range of fields, and in higher education contexts, however, my colleagues and I (Brown et al., 2022) use nudges as a proactive strategy to heighten engagement with critical study materials (Brown, et al., 2023; Lawrence et al., 2019).
The process of nudging includes:
determining what to nudge (e.g., a critical weekly resource);
planning when to promote and nudge key resources;
identifying who to nudge (e.g. those students who have not ‘accessed’ a key critical weekly resource).
The final step in the nudge process is delivering the nudge communication to targeted students to bring attention to the resource and its importance (Brown et al., 2023).
Results from my courses indicated that after a key resource – for example ‘The Winning Formula (an orientation presentation to set the scene for the semester of study) – was nudged, engagement increased from 37% of students accessing the resource to 74%. Similarly, when I nudged students to engage with the first course module (Module 1), engagement increased from 45% to 70% (Brown, et al., 2023; Brown, et al., 2022).
Similar positive results to the ones evidenced in my courses have been evidenced in the courses of my colleagues, with results from the associated nudge research projects disseminated in a range of publications (most recently in Brown et al., 2024)). These insights reinforce the effectiveness of planned and strategic nudges as a promising strategy for motivating students’ access to key online resources.
*For further details you may like to view a recent HERDSA webinar where I presented on ‘the nudging protocol’.
Melissa explains badging
Badges are used widely in most forms of gamification to guide user behaviour (Fanshawe et al, 2020). I use badges in my course to reward students as they finish activities and encourage them to collect all the badges to complete the course.
The process of badging includes:
determining what activities should be badged (e.g., course modules and forums); and,
setting up badges using inbuilt technology in the Learning Management System.
I include images on the badges (Figure 1) that are individual to the course and personalise the message that students receive with the badge to direct them to the next activity to be completed. Once the activity is completed, badges are instantaneously awarded to students. Feedback from many students indicates that earning a badge is considered exciting and rewarding (Fanshawe & Burke, 2022).
Figure 1: Example badges
To Nudge or To Badge
What we’ve learnt is that we don’t need to choose one approach over another, but there is value in using a range of motivational strategies to increase student engagement. Both our strategies are targeted at students at different ends of the participation continuum within our courses. Alice uses nudging early in the semester to motivate low and non-engaged students to access key materials, while Melissa rewards students during the semester once they had completed key tasks.
Both of us agree that motivational strategies, such as nudging and badging, provide students with a ‘better online learning experience’ as exhorted by the Universities Accord Panel (at 84).
Associate Professor Alice Brown, School of Education, Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts, University of Southern Queensland Alice.Brown@usq.edu.au Her research and publications focus on online student engagement in HE. @DrAMTBrown Linkedin: Dr Alice Brown
Associate Professor Melissa Fanshawe, School of Education, Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts, University of Southern Queensland Melissa.Fanshawe@unisq.edu.au. Melissa specialises in mathematics curriculum and pedagogy.