Abstract

Using virtual badges as reward system offers a way to motivate students and works well in educational settings. Virtual badges are also a modern concept to use with students. They can blog, tweet, or post about their rewards to their friends and show them the link to their badge. Students are rewarded with badges for being active participants in Foursquare, the Xbox Live system, the “Huffington Post,” the gaming website Pogo.com, e-learning, and other social applications all over the web. In addition, this study is a descriptive qualitative study on the use of virtual badges as a reward system to encourage student participation in English classes comprising (1) the type of virtual badges the teachers used to encourage students’ participation in English classes, and (2) the virtual badges used in English classes. This study was conducted from July to September 2012. The subject of the study was the English teacher of Grade 12 in who majored in Software Engineering at Bakti Nusantara Vocational School 666. The data were collected using an interview guide, observation checklist, and questionnaire, and then were analyzed descriptively. Based on the research findings, it was found that the teacher used “smaller”’ type badges to motivate students in the classroom. This study also found that virtual badges as a reward system is effective in teaching and learning English.