UCEM staff’s open badges research paper published in journal

Posted on: 12 September, 2017

The hard work of two members of UCEM’s Online Education Department has paid off after a research paper they authored was published in a journal.

The paper entitled Open Badges: A systematic Review of Peer-Reviewed Published Literature (2011-2015) was published in the European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning last Friday.

The paper was co-authored by UCEM’s Tharindu Liyanagunawardena and Sandra Scalzavara, along with the University of Reading’s Shirley Williams (Professor Emerita), and examines peer-reviewed research publications on open badges.

Tharindu, who is an Instructional Designer and Chair of UCEM’s Online Learning Research Centre, said: “We submitted the paper to this journal because it is open access and we want the paper to reach as wide an audience as possible.

“Open badges is a popular topic in higher and further education as an increasing number of universities are using them to reward learning and extracurricular activities.

“Despite there being lots of research on open badges, there was no systematic review of the associated published literature, so I believe we have filled a gap with our paper which will make it easier for researchers to get an overall understanding of open badges research carried out to date.”

The authors read through almost 250 papers to create their own review and having submitted their work in June, the paper was accepted for publication in the biannual journal in August.

To read the paper, click here.