According to http://openbadges.org/, a badge is an online representation of a skill you've earned. Moodle can act as a badge consumer and a badge producer or issuer. As a consumer, a user has the ability to display badges earned elsewhere; as an issuer, badges can be earned in Moodle and displayed or collected elsewhere. Moodle distinguishes between two types of badges:
First, badges have to be enabled in Advanced features. As an administrator you will then have to configure the usage of badges by going to Badges | Badges settings:
The Default badge issuer name and Default badge issuer contact details settings set the name and e-mail address of your organization, which is displayed with the badges that are being issued. Make sure these have been approved internally; if set incorrectly, achievements from your site will potentially not be credible.
Salt for hashing the recipient's email address, also known as the badge salt, allows other badge consumers to verify badge earners without exposing their e-mail address. Once set, it should not be altered.
The two remaining settings allow users to display badges from https://backpack.openbadges.org/backpack/login (Enable connection to external backpacks) and to Enable course badges.
Site-wide badges have to be added by navigating to Badges | Add a new badge. This task can be delegated via the moodle/badges:manageglobalsettings capability. In order to create a new badge, you will have to add the following information:
Badge details comprises of Name, Description, and Image. You can either use one of the many online badge creation tools (for instance, https://www.openbadges.me/) or get a professional to design the badge images.
Issuer details have been set automatically using the values provided in Badge settings.
As the name suggests, Badge expiry specifies when the validity of a badge lapses. This is, for instance, relevant in compliance settings. There are three settings. They are as follows:
- Never (default)
- Fixed date (specific date)
- Relative date (specifies the number of
<time frame>after the issuing date)
Once a badge has been created, you need to add badge criteria, which specifies when the badge will be awarded to a user:
- Manual issue by role: Select any role (usually Teacher) which is allowed to manually award the badge. This is based on the moodle/badges:awardbadge capability. If more than one role has been selected, you need to specify This criterion is complete when … as All of the selected criteria are completed (for example, when a teacher and manager have to award the badge) or Any of the selected criteria are completed (either of the two user roles is sufficient).
- Completing a set of courses: You have to select at least one course from the list of courses. The courses that are listed are the ones that have course completion activated. For each course, you have the option to specify a minimum grade and by when this has to be achieved. If more than one course is chosen, you will again specify the This criterion is complete when …option.
- Profile completion: You can select one or many user profile fields, which also include user-defined profile fields. This is usually only used in conjunction with any of the other two settings, for example, the badge can only be issued to any learner from a specific country.
In the Message tab, you should specify Badge message that is being sent out to users on awarding a badge. Inside Message body, you can use three self-explanatory place holders, such as %badgename%, %username%, and %badgelink%. It is recommended that you Attach the badge to message.
Make sure you Enable access to the badge, which effectively activates the usage of the badge. You can manage all your site-wide badges by navigating to Badges | Manage badges.