Technological and Implementation Issues in Moodle-Based Digital Badge System

Digital badges, touted as a gamification tool that can potentially influence learner motivation, engagement and participation, are being used increasingly in a variety of educational domains to facilitate and motivate learning. Using a badge system design implemented in the Moodle learning management platform, data was collected from four experiments from 2015 to 2017 to examine the effects of gamification with the use of digital badges on introductory programming students' intrinsic motivation. This paper provides an in-depth examination of seldomly discussed technological and implementation issues we encountered in implementing our Moodle-based badge system, worthy of exploration to support future gamification studies in this area. Our gamified implementation is analyzed according to five main factors primarily adopted from an IT implementation framework: (1) assessment of needs, (2) choice of technology, (3) technological infrastructure, (4) system and environmental factors and (5) evaluation. The findings highlight enabling and challenging factors associated with the technology and badge implementation. Our experience shows that badge systems may be influenced by contextual factors such as cost and scale of implementation. We provide recommendations to guide educational stakeholders, particularly those considering Moodle as their badge implementation platform.