Designing a Mentoring System for Pre-training Preparation in a Blended Digital Badge Program

The purpose of this study was to redesign a mentoring system and verify its effects. The research field involved a blended instructional design (ID) course conducted as a university extension course composed of prior online assignments, face-to-face workshops, and post-learning assignments. The results demonstrated that the redesign of the ID course may improve the completion rates of online pre-training and post-learning assignments altogether. Additionally, the findings showed that motivational e-mails were useful for facilitating participants’ access e-learning. Furthermore, some participants’ reports suggested that the syllabus provided on the website gave participants a perspective of the course and motivated them to learn during the course. In addition, motivational e-mails were helpful in making participants feel a sense of belonging in the ID course. Based on these results, we proposed three design principles for supporting participants’ completion of lifelong learning activities that do not provide incentives such as university credits and job promotions.