Create and manage badges

Badges are a good way of celebrating achievement, showing progress and encouraging student participation / engagement through micro-accreditation. They are available to participants enrolled in the course and related to the activities within it.

Badges are awarded based on a variety of criteria and can be displayed on the dashboard or more widely via an 'open badges backpack'.

Unfortunately, badges cannot be reused across multiple courses. Each course must have its own copy of a badge.

In this guide:

Add course badges
Set criteria for awarding badges
Make badges available
Manage badges
Share badges to an open badges 'backpack' or to LinkedIn

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Features

Unique badges can be customised for individual courses and academic years.
Enables people to visually demonstrate skills and experience gained.

Benefits

Rewards student activity and participation.
Supports gamification and micro-credentialing.

FAQs

Can I share badges outside Warwick?

Yes, badges can be added to badgr.io (a 'credentialing platform for issuing skills-aligned digital badges'). It can also be manually added to LinkedIn.

Can I reuse badges?

Badges are unique to a single course in an academic year and will need to be recreated with a new name and criteria if you wish to use the same image again.

Adding and managing badges

Step 1 - Add course badges

This process is available to all staff with an editing role.

From the course you wish to add a badge to, click on the More tab from the course navigation menu.
Select Badges.
Click the Add a new badge button.
Give the badge a unique name (and optionally a version e.g. Academic Year).
Add a description that describes the purpose of the badge and what it demonstrates if earned.
For Image, click the Choose a file button to add an image for the badge. This should be a 400px x 400px .gif .jpe .jpeg .jpg or .png image.
Optionally, add author details (which could be your department) and/or a caption describing the badge image.
Click Create badge.

This will take you to a page showing the badge with a dropdown list where you can add criteria for awarding the badge as well as additional details.

Link opens in a new window More information on Adding course badges is available at Moodle Docs.Link opens in a new window

Step 2 - Set criteria for awarding badges

After creating the badge in step 1, you will see an orange label on the page with the text 'Criteria for this badge have not been set up yet.' (If you have left this page, you can get back to it via More > Badges > click on the badge you want to manage > select Criteria from the dropdown list).

From the Add badge criteria dropdown list, choose from the following options:
- Manual issue by role - selecting this enables the Course Leader to (one or more) other roles e.g. Non-editing Teacher to be able to award the badge.
- Course completion - Completion tracking must be enabled in the course. You can set this to autocomplete based on grade.
- Activity completion - Completion tracking must be enabled in the course. All available activites will be listed, check the box to select them, and then choose whether one or all of these must be completed to get the badge.
- Previously awarded badges - a course badge can have either another course badge or a site badge as criterion.
In each case, you can add a description for the criteria set to help people understand how and when they will meet this.
Click Save to update the criteria.
You can then add more criteria if required and/or edit or delete the criterion you have just added.

Maintaining quality and when to award

Digital badges are awarded by the University of Warwick and should reflect genuine learning or contributions that meet Warwick’s standards and/or Warwick Core Skills.

Badges may be awarded for:

Completing a short course or programme.
Completing a substantial section of a course or module.
Completing a significant task, such as facilitating an online course or providing exceptional peer support.
Developing digital skills, employability skills, or meeting career-related goals.

More information on Awarding the badge is available at Moodle DocsLink opens in a new window.

Step 3 - Make badges available

The page will show an orange label with the text 'This badge is currently not available to users. Enable access if you want users to earn this badge.' displayed.

Click the button labelled 'Enable Access' at the end of the text.
A modal will open with the text:

Confirm

This will make your badge visible to users and allow them to start earning it.

It is possible that some users already meet this badge's criteria and will be issued this badge immediately after you enable it.

Once a badge has been issued it will be locked - certain settings including the criteria and expiry settings can no longer be changed.

Are you sure you want to enable access to the badge 'Badge Name'?
Click Enable.
Your badge is now ready and will be issued automatically when a course participant meets the criteria set in Step 2.

Step 4 - Manage badges

From the course Badges page, click the Actions menu next to one of the badges.
From here you can:
- Disable access/ Enable access to the badge. This controls whether or not the badge can be awarded in the course.
- Award badge where the criteria is set to manual issue and you have the permitted role in the course to issue badges. This is also where you can revoke badges already issued. Only manually awarded badges can be revoked. Please double-check your awarding criteria before saving and making the badge available if you think this will be necessary.
- Edit the details of the badge such as name and image file. This can only be done when the badge is disabled.
- Copy the badge.
- Delete the badge from the course. This will give you the option to keep previously issued badges or remove those from all awarded students.

Alternatively, you can click on a badge to see its Overview page. Clicking the dropdown list gives you further badge management options:

Edit details - edit the name, image and other details of the badge.
Criteria - view and edit the criteria required to earn the badge.
Message - customise the message that is sent to students when they are awarded the badge.
Recipients - view who has been awarded a badge. For manually awarded badges, click the Award badge button to award or revoke badges.
Endorsement - third party accreditations (official or unofficial) such as from an external body or the management of an institution, adding value to a badge by giving it their approval.
Related badges - badges which are linked in some way to the badge being awarded, for example on a similar topic or one of several levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced). They are shown as text only, not hyperlinks.
Alignments - external skills or standards, which the badge is aligned with, may be specified. Any external skills or standards are displayed on the badge page

Dropdown menu for a badge showing Overview, Edit details, Criteria, Message, Recipients, Endorsement, Related badges and Alignments

Other considerations

Engagement

Use badges to reward completion of clearly defined milestones, such as finishing a sequence of weekly activities or completing all required practice tasks in a Moodle course, to encourage ongoing participation rather than one-off engagement.

Accessibility

Ensure badges are achievable by all students, especially those who engage with Moodle asynchronously or use assistive technologies.

Teaching at Scale

Badges are awarded automatically and consistently, so can be a practical approach for 'rewarding' large cohorts engaging with the subject, without increasing staff workload.

Inclusion

Use badges to recognise a diverse range of achievements and learning pathways, so that different strengths and contributions are valued.

Branding

Please ensure that badges are aligned with the University BrandLink opens in a new window.

Share badges

The information below relates to anyone awarded a badge via Moodle - these will be participants with the 'student' role on the Moodle course and as such may include both staff and students depending on who the course is aimed at.

Viewing badges in Moodle

Click the profile icon (which displays your initials) at the top of the page.
Select Profile from the top of the drop-down list.

All the badges that you have been awarded will appear in the middle column.

Adding badges to the 'Parchment' open badges backpack from within Moodle

Create a Parchment open badges account via Parchment Digital Badges.
- Optionally, you can create a Collection to hold your badges.
- Get Help and Support with ParchmentLink opens in a new window.
From Moodle, click the profile icon (which displays your initials) at the top of the page.
Select Preferences from the drop-down list
Select Backpack settings from the Badges box
Click on Backpack provider and select
https://badgr.io
Add your email address and the password you set in step 1.
Click to connect and this will redirect to a page that says Verification pending. You will receive an email prompting you to verify your email.
Once verified, Moodle will open and say connected.
To add badges to your backpack, click the profile icon (which displays your initials) at the top of the page.
Select Profile from the top of the drop-down list.
Click on the badge you want to add to your backpack.
Click on the Add to Backpack button.

Badges and LinkedIn

It is possible to add a Warwick Moodle badge to LinkedIn.

From Moodle, click the profile icon (which displays your initials) at the top of the page.
Select Profile from the top of the drop-down list.
Click on the badge you want to add to LinkedIn.
Copy the URL for the page e.g. https://moodle.warwick.ac.uk/badges/badge.php?hash=308f5vca575743da6b0xxxx
Right-click and save the badge image.
Log into your LinkedIn account.
Click on the Me button on the top bar.
Click the Add profile section.
Select Add license and certifications.
Fill in the details (Name of the Badge, Issuer (University of Warwick), dates for issue (and expiry if present).
Leave the Credentials ID blank.
Paste in the URL from Moodle into the Credentials URL field.
Associate at least one skill with this badge.
Upload the badge image.
Click Save.