Looking Back on the Collaboration With Vilnius University: What We Researched and Developed
Here at BitDegree, we take education very seriously and strive to make our online learning platform as effective and useful to our 900,000+ users as possible. One of the best ways to make sure we’re doing it right is by collaborating with academia and conveying scientific research — and if you have followed BitDegree for a while now, you already know we’re working closely with Vilnius University in Lithuania and the University of Tartu in Estonia on multiple research and development projects that allow us to understand the science behind learning processes, the vast body of education research, and gain insights into learner motivation contributing to scientific literature. As a matter of fact, the first project we have collaborated with Vilnius University on is nearing the finish line — let’s see what we managed to achieve together in two years!
Where it all began
Back in 2018, BitDegree and the Economics and Business Administration Faculty of Vilnius University (one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe, founded all the way back in 1579!) came up with an idea of a research and development project that would allow them to understand the reasons behind low online course completion rates and find new ways to tackle the students’ motivation. Do economic incentives work? Could a job offer do the trick? Or would game design elements appeal to their competitive side?
The project called ‘The development of an online learning platform with a learning motivation system based on elements of game design and blockchain technology’ was soon funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the program ‘Intellect. Common Scientific and Business Projects’. Rolling up our sleeves, our team dived into research and development!
The entry stage: preparation and gathering the data
Just like most scientific projects, this one began by reviewing scientific papers and collecting data through empirical research (conducted interviews). This allowed us to grasp the students’ basic reasoning behind choosing to learn online and selecting the precise course or instructor. Understanding this was an absolute must for taking our research forward.
Upon discovering there are five main motivation theories that can be related to e-learning (namely intrinsic and extrinsic motivation theory, self-determination theory, the ARCS model, social cognitive theory, and expectancy theory), we chose the self-determination theory as a basis for our study and used the Academic Motivation Scale to measure the levels of motivation.
Why and how students choose e-learning
Conducting interviews with e-learners strengthened our belief that most of them chose e-learning due to the flexibility it provides both time and location-wise. According to them, it was a great chance to improve their professional knowledge while working full-time or taking care of other responsibilities, as well as gain practical experience on the go. A few also mentioned course completion certificates as powerful external motivators.
When it comes to selecting a specific course, interviewees were mostly interested (unsurprisingly) in educational content, its quality (informativeness, structure, usefulness, and presentation), and value for money. People were a bit skeptical about using financial incentives but agreed they could work if they appealed to inner motivation and self-determination instead of merely a wish to receive a certain sum of money.
The participants couldn’t offer much insight in discussing game design elements in relation to online education. This topic was barely discussed in academic papers, too, so the overall conclusion could be that it was simply too unfamiliar for both researchers and users still. Well, that’s what we came here for, haven’t we?
What lies behind the decision to finish or drop a course
There’s a multitude of reasons why a student might decide to drop out of an online course, no matter how flexible and convenient it is. During the discussions with study participants, a lot of them mentioned content (e.g., boring lectures or unmet expectations) or technical issues (e.g., complex navigation or connectivity problems). Communication, course design, and other elements didn’t cause major issues.
However, the majority of reasons selected as the most important by the participants were directly related to the lack of inner motivation. While some mentioned it by name and some chose to rather call it a lack of time, overlapping activities, or task overload, the conclusion is still the same: not prioritizing learning is a direct result of not feeling motivated enough. A decision to complete a course, on the other hand, turned out to be mostly influenced by social recognition, perceived ease of use, usefulness, inner motivation, and perceived satisfaction.
First experiments: economic incentives
To try and understand whether the economic incentives can impact course completion rates, we gathered eight groups of 30 participants each and experimented with three types of variables: financial incentives ($0, $10, $20, or $50), job offers (included or not), and the complexity of the course (a must-pass threshold or guaranteed completion).
The first important finding was the fact that there’s no tangible effect of financial incentives in terms of improving course completion rates. On the contrary: the more money was promised to the participants who finish the course, the less actually did — and there’s a good reason for that. Not only does external motivation is a lot less impactful than the inner kind, but an unusual incentive also raises skepticism about the quality of the course. However, we should note that offering a financial incentive did attract more participants to start learning, which could potentially translate to a higher completion rate if the users enjoyed the educational material.
Adding a result-related threshold and providing a chance to get a job offer, however, proved useful and raised course completion rates four times and more than six times, respectively. This correlates closely to the idea the BitDegree team had since the early stages of building the company: for the majority of users, the desired outcome of learning is getting qualified for a job, promotion, or raise they are striving for — therefore, education and job markets should not be separated. Interestingly enough, the impact was opposite in terms of reaction time: financial rewards shortened the time gap between publishing the ad and starting the course significantly, while other incentives did not cause a noticeable change.
What about game design and community?
In our second experiment, we aimed to evaluate the impact a gamified learning environment can have on student motivation. The gamification of the platform was achieved in collaboration with Octalysis Group — a world-leading team of gamification experts that helped BitDegree build the cyberpunk-themed BitDegree City, according to the eight motivational factors described in the Octalysis model by Yu-kai Chou.
For the experiment, again, we chose three variables: an expected game element (2, 10, or 50 collectible XP points for every 10 minutes spent learning), unexpected rewards (100 tokens, 2000 tokens, or no tokens), and duration of the course (1–2 hours, 4–5 hours, or 8–9 hours).
Out of 261 VU students registered to participate in the study, 150 started learning, and 94 actually finished the course. Out of 8 game design elements mentioned in the study, XP points and treasure chests were their favorites. Younger participants also tended to evaluate gamification more positively overall. However, it was interesting to see that unexpected rewards had a slight negative impact on user satisfaction and perceived usefulness of the course — this might be explained by the old-school but still prominent idea of gamification only being relevant in leisure-time activities and not professional training.
Another important idea that needed testing is the level of importance of a community — and this truly let us gain some important insights. The experiments showed that social interactions (with peers taking the same course, potential employers, etc.) are vital for the learners’ satisfaction with the course and make them less likely to drop a course before completion. Not only does it encourage your inner motivation and help you learn quicker and more effectively, but it also allows you to earn recognition, build a certain reputation, and become a stronger candidate for a job — therefore, technical functionalities that allow communication (e.g., a news feed, private messaging, groups, or forums) are a worthy addition to any course’s design. However, it’s important to understand it’s impossible to create a strong community overnight: developing a sense of belonging takes time.
Following research with development
Once we had a firmer grasp of the students’ opinions and evaluations on what works for online learning motivation and what doesn’t, we started developing our own platform according to the study findings. In addition to that, we also aimed to make it decentralized and offer three distinct interfaces — one for the learners, one for the instructors who could be rewarded and motivated to create and upload educational material, and one for potential learning sponsors. As of now, the first versions of each have been replaced by upgraded and more intuitive ones with more functionalities.
The initial user interface did not have career-related fields, recommendations, and a few more important functionalities that now allow BitDegree users to have their profile act as a digital resume with a unique URL. This version is also advanced in terms of community features: you have your forums, personal messaging system, and simple-to-leave reviews.
As for the instructor’s UI, it now entails not only the basic course creation, management, and publishing processes but also adding quizzes and other assignments, presenting and recording live classes, following the students’ progress, creating learning paths, and using handy tools for analytics. To help instructors raise the bar of their course quality, BitDegree created Teachers’ Academy that includes informative guides, articles, and tips for every stage of teaching online. We have also created an opportunity for educators to create mini-organizations and divide different roles or responsibilities between them to provide a more diverse learning experience.
Speaking of sponsors, BitDegree actually came up with two separate interfaces for sponsors who have different goals: the Talent Acquisition Platform (TAP) allows employers to offer financial incentives for training and/or testing potential candidates, and the microscholarship program appeals to social responsibility and philanthropy: anyone can apply and participate as a student or as a sponsor. The latter proved to be especially relevant in less financially stable countries.
During the project, our team and Vilnius University scientists also looked into the effect a clear structure can have for learning — however, there wasn’t much correlation between the two. Still, BitDegree decided to offer it as an option for those who prefer to plan their learning in advance. Again, the second, updated version was received a lot better, as it had a fully-integrated UI and allowed the learner to clearly see and understand their progress. At the moment, there are eight pre-defined learning paths available to our users — and in addition to that, they can create their own, using courses, readings, external resources, and assignments.
The role of blockchain
The very name of the project includes blockchain technologies, so there’s no getting around that, right? After all, using blockchain allowed us to enrich our platform with extra flexibility, reliability, availability, and transparency.
The first way we chose to leverage these technologies is by writing our users’ course completion certificates into the blockchain using an autonomous protocol based on an improved OpenCerts2.0 system. All of the certificates issued before the update were also renewed to have the same level of transparency and be completely tamper-proof. Every user can download their certificates in JSON format or share them using unique URLs.
Using blockchain-based smart contracts is also key for our microscholarship program: directly connecting the sponsor and the student allows us to avoid including third parties in the transaction. The money provided by the sponsors remains locked in the contract for a defined period of time and is only released to the student if they complete the selected course on or before the deadline and receive a blockchain certificate (otherwise, the sponsor receives a full refund). This is also excellent in terms of reaching the unbanked, as the stipend reaches the learner in the form of cryptocurrency. While technically smart contracts could be used in a lot more parts of the platform, we decided not to do it for now, as the other cases would not have been as cost-effective as we would have preferred.
Ready to sum it all up?
During the ‘The development of an online learning platform with a learning motivation system based on elements of game design and blockchain technology’ project, we dived deep into understanding what motivates people to learn online and upgraded our e-learning platform based on our findings and additional insights. This might sound very simple — and yet, when you think about it, the work the BitDegree team and Vilnius University researchers have put in has been of incredible value: our findings allowed us to have a massive impact on understanding online education and employing the best practices. In our future efforts and collaborations with educational institutions, we’re going to take it even further — all to make e-learning more effective, accessible, and popular on a global scale!
