Using Badges

1. Using Badges

Badges are a way for users to display achievement, and for you as an administrator to track progress and mastery.  Badges will display in a user's profile when earned so they are an easy visual indicator of a student's progress.  Badges can be pushed out to social media if certain settings are applied.  By default, badges will be enabled on your site.  Those with permission to do so can add a badge to a course and tie activity completion to it.  When completion standards are met the badge will issue.

Add a New Badge

From the gear icon at the top of your course page, click the menu and select the option for "More" menu items.  From here, locate the section on badges and choose Add a New Badge.

Now you'll have the opportunity to create your new badge.  You should name the badge something clear and relevant to what it will indicate.  Examples include Student Orientation Badge, HR Compliance, and Achievement in Learning.  Describing your badge will help users who will also be working with and managing your course badges identify what it is for, and it will support users who earn it in explaining the criteria behind it.  

Next, select an image for your badge - please consider the recommendations below.

Mozilla Backpack recommends that the image for a badge be a square PNG (or SVG). The file size should be a maximum of 256kb and should not be smaller than 90px square. When you create your badge image, it is recommended that you view it at a size of 50px square to ensure that the content remains legible when scaled down.

Moodle recommends a PNG or a JPEG so as you can see there is a slight discrepancy.  To date, our suggestion is you use a PNG (format accepted by both sites) with the size suggestions above.

Lastly you should indicate who awarded the badge and whether it should expire in a certain period of time or remain indefinitely awarded.

Tie in Completion Criteria

Now that your initial setup is done, you need to tell your Moodle course what is required of learners before they are issued the badge.  This is your badge criteria.  

Enable

Once you've decided your criteria you have one last step before anyone can actually earn your badge, and that is to enable access.  Moodle will present you with a warning if this step is not yet complete. 

2. Ways to Award Badges

You can award a site-level badge based on two criteria.  Those ways are: 

• based on cohort membership 
  
• based on user picture upload 

At both the site-level and the course-level you can award a badge based on previously earned / awarded badges. 

2.1. Awarding a Badge for Profile Completion

Awarding a Badge for Profile Completion

A site-level badge can be issued based on profile completion, such as uploading a picture to your profile. 

Once you select Profile Completion from the criteria menu, you'll see a wide array of options available for you to choose from.  In our sample, we'll stick with the profile picture upload.  In the menu this option is called User Picture.

Once you've enabled this badge users can earn it and it will display in their profile. 

2.2. Awarding a Badge for Cohort Membership

Awarding a Badge for Cohort Membership

Awarding a badge for membership within a certain cohort is very similar to awarding for profile completion.  Assuming you have cohorts created at the site level and you have users enrolled, you can create a badge to showcase this enrollment to others.

Your criteria in this case is cohort membership.

Your next step is to select the cohort that you want to connect to this issued badge. 

Save your changes and enable access to your badge and the students in your cohort will receive the badge.  It will display in their profile as shown below.

2.3. Awarding a Badge Based on Previously Awarded Badges

Awarding a Badge Based on Previously Awarded Badges

You can award badges based on previously awarded badges.  This is an interesting way to award a badge, and ways you use this are limited solely by your imagination and the courses your instructors are managing.  The content below is from our Advanced Usage of Moodle course, where your teachers can reference it for further support.  

In order to explain how this process works, let's work through a sample scenario together.  Let's consider that you have a course with quizzes in place.  Assuming you'd like learners to score high grades on their exams, you could create a badge within your course that highlights their achievement when they do so.  

Please consider that you'll have to tie in the activity completion settings for these quizzes so that they are considered "complete" when a learner achieves your "grade to pass".

If learners in your course earn this badge you could set another badge to automatically trigger and be awarded to those same users.   

From here you'll select the badge that you want to have been previously awarded / earned. 

Once you've enabled this new badge you will allow for users to earn it!  

2.4. 2.4 Awarding a Badge Based on Earned Competencies

In Moodle 3.7 and on you can award a badge based on a competency that a learner has mastered.  You'll find this option at the bottom of the criteria drop-down menu, as shown below. 

Should you choose to tie competencies to the badge criteria your next step will be to identify which competency or competencies should be aligned with the badge.  You'll find a search box where you can begin to type in the name of the competency and once it appears you can to make your selection(s).  The next piece is to decide whether all of these competencies should be met or if any of them will do.