Badges are a good way to show progress made during a course. Badges can be awarded based on a variety of chosen criteria and can be displayed on the Moodle profile of users who earn them.
There are two categories of badges:
- Site badges - available to users on the site and related to activities on the site, such as completing activities.
- Course badges - available to users enrolled in the course and related to course activities.
Managing course badges
- If course badges have been enabled by the administrator, then the teacher will see a badges section by accessing the Actions menu located in the top right corner of the Virtual Classroom, and accessing the "More" option. Or from Badges in the course administration block on the left corner of the screen.
- New badges can be added by going to "Add a new badge"; while clicking on an existing badge allows to access its details and make changes if it is not already enabled.
- If course badges have been enabled in "Actions menu > More > Badges > Badges settings", a list of badges created and available for assignment will be displayed, as well as the actions that can be performed on each badge.
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Badge status: Badges can be available or unavailable by activating or deactivating the "eye" icon or by using the "On/Off" option.
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Criteria: Shows how the badge is earned.
- Recipient: Displays the name of the users who have earned a badge.
- Actions: The following actions are available.
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Note: The availability to enable or disable access depends on the current status of the badge ( i.e. if the badge is available to users, the icon "disable access" will be displayed).
Before a badge has been submitted to at least one user, all these details and settings can be edited by accessing the "Edit badge" icon..
Editing details
To change the details of a badge that has already been configured, click on "disable access". Once the details have been edited, click on "enable access" again.
Criteria
In this section the criteria established when awarding the badge can be seen.
Messages
This setting allows to edit the message that is sent when someone gets a badge. Additional options include "Attach badge to message", which allows to add a file image to an email, and a checkbox for "Notify badge creator" which allows to adjust the frequency of notifications sent to the badge creator when a badge is earned by a user.
Notifications about badges can be sent by email, and from Moodle 2.6 onwards, by instant messaging. The badge notification email has the sender name and contact set as the 'From Address'. The badge notification instant message appears as sent by the primary site administrator for site badges and by the primary teacher for course badges.
The default message outputs for badge notification can be configured by accessing 'Administration > Site Administration > Plugins > Messaging Settings > Default Message Output'. By default, notifications for badge submissions are sent by instant messaging when a user is online on the site or sent by email when the user is offline.
Recipient
This tab displays a list of users who have already earned the badge.
Deleting badges
Once a badge has been awarded, there are two options to remove it, available by clicking on the X icon for the badge in question from the Manage badges screen for site or course badges.
- Delete, but keep existing badges awarded - if this option is chosen, the badge will no longer be available but students who have earned the badge will still be able to display it on their profiles.
- Remove and delete all existing badges awarded - if this option is chosen, the badge will no longer be available and students who have earned it will no longer have it available on their profiles.
Note: Even if the badge is removed from Moodle, if a student has added it to an external backpack, it will still be visible online, although the criteria for awarding the badge will no longer be available.
Useful links
Add a new My latest badges block
Add a new My Latest Badges block to the dashboard
Set criteria for awarding a badge
Manage badge site administration settings
View and manage your own earned badges
View users who earned a specific badge without being able to award a badge
