How to use Badges in Moodle

Updated 25 Feb 2020

Moodle Help & Support

How to: use badges in Moodle

Introduction to badges

Badges are used in many types of courses and modules. We use them a lot in NOOCs and courses related to compliance. A badge can be issued for completion of one or more activities. Normally we use a badge per unit, with perhaps one for the introductory activity (to increase motivation to continue) and there may be special badges (e.g., for students who carry out extra tasks such as contributing a lot or mentoring others).

There are two reasons to include badges.

The acquisition of badges helps you easily work out who has completed units and thus the whole course, to assess entitlement to credit.
In Moodle, students can see their badges on their profile. The idea is that badges can motivate students to take part in activities and complete units. Badges can also be exported to external sites such as Mozilla Backpack or LinkedIn to add to an online CV.

What are badges? See the blog post “The Whats and Whys of Open Badges“

How to add a badge to your Moodle module

Decide on badges to include

It's important not to make badges too easy. These badges represent and are issued by the University of Nottingham (the equivalent of a certificate) so should not be too easy to get. For example, a badge might be given for

completion of a short course
completion of one (substantial) unit of a long course or module (e.g., Your University Journey)
completion of a special (substantial) task eg Facilitating an online course or supporting peers to an extraordinary degree.

First create a badge image (i.e. the graphic you will use as the badge)

You can use any graphics program or go to https://www.openbadges.me/designer.html. The graphic should include some word or phrase that explains what it is: e.g., “Resource collector” or “Sustainability Week 1”, and the University logo.

Example:

Second – add it to your module

In your module enable completion tracking.
http://workspace.nottingham.ac.uk/display/Moodlehelp/How+to+use+completion+tracking+to+monitor+student+progress
Make sure you have at least one resource set up with some completion tracking.
Now click the Cogwheel (Actions icon)
Click More
Scroll down to Badges > click Add a new badge
Give the badge a name and a description (include a summary of the badge criteria here)
Upload the badge image you designed and saved earlier
Add your details as the person who created the badge image
Check the issuer details are correct (University of Nottingham Moodle)
Enter a badge expiry date if needed or leave on Never if no expiry is needed.
Click “Create Badge”

Now you must choose your badge criteria (in other words, what does the student have to complete in order to earn the badge)

You can set the badge to be awarded manually (Manual issue by role) – i.e. you can award it to whichever students you judge to have earned it (this is assigned to a certain role, eg Editing Teacher) – or on module completion (which must be defined in Moodle) - OR set Activity completion (likely to be the most common)
Choose “Activity Completion” and on the next page select the activity or activities that have completion checking enabled in your course. If no activities have completion checking enabled then you won’t be able to progress.

Ensure it is set to ALL of the activities not ANY or the badge will be too easy to get!
Click Save
Once this is done, you need to “Enable Access”. This activates the badge and it is ready for use.

If it is awarded by activity completion, then it is automatic: whenever a user completes the activity or activities you picked they will be redirected to the badge where they can download a copy of it. It is also attached to their Moodle profile.

To manually award the badg, in the module:

Click the Cogwheel (Actions icon)
Click More
Scroll down to Badges > Click Manage Badges
Click the "Cup" icon to award the badge

You can award it to multiple users at the same time.

Badge winners can also “Push” the badge to an external "Backpack", such as Badgr, which is an external tool that stores all open badges and can be used to demonstrate the badges gained.