Students' Perspectives on Badges in Educational Social Media Platforms: The Case of SAPO Campus Tutorial Badges

This paper, reporting on research at an early stage, aims to analyse the impact of badges when used in conjunction with an introductory tutorial that aims to help users getting to know its most important areas and functionalities. With that in mind, a test session was designed, asking learners new to SAPO Campus platform (an institutionally supported social Web platform), to complete a tutorial, discovering the existence of badges and how they could be earned and associated with their profile page, visible to the community. Learners were also asked about the impact of badges on their desire to complete the tutorial, and their general attitude towards being rewarded for completing several actions inside and outside the platform. Preliminary data reveals that learners considered that badges had a significant positive contribute to make them feel more engaged and motivated to complete the tutorial.