Comparing the Effects of Moodle-Wiki and Moodle-Digital Badges on Undergraduate Health Science Students’ Collaborative Learning, Motivation, Behavioral Engagement and Academic Performance

The major aim of this study is to compare the effectiveness of Moodle-Wiki and Moodle-Digital Badges on undergraduate health science students’ collaborative learning, motivation, behavioral engagement and academic performance. Over 70 health science students will be allocated to either a Moodle-wiki group or a Moodle-digital badges group. The Moodle-wiki group will participate in weekly online group discussions and co-construct knowledge. The Moodle-digital badges group will answer similar essay questions on the same online discussion forum weekly and will be awarded gold, silver, or bronze badges based on their performance. The outcome measures will be collaborative learning ( Group Process Questionnaire), behavioral engagement and motivation (Moodle activity log, students’ perceptions and overall course performance). It is hypothesized that the Moodle-Digital Badges group will outperform the Moodle-Wiki group at the end of the course.