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Certificate module

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The Certificate module creates PDF certificates/diplomas for students of the course and is completely customizable. You can add borders, watermarks, seals and even show grade information. A non-standard module, it was originally created by Hugo Salgado, July, 2004, updated by David T. Cannon, July, 2005 to use FPDF and include printing grades, updated and currently maintained by Chardelle Bush to include backup/restore, types, reporting, emailing, unicode support, etc.

There are different certificate modules for 1.6 and 1.7. They are not compatible. These instructions were written for 1.6. Chardelle Bush has made sure Certificate is updated for every version through 1.9.

Installing

  1. Download and Unpack the Certificate zip file in a temporary area, keep the paths
  2. Find the folder that is called "Certificate" in the unpacked area
  3. Copy that folder to your moodle mod folder located for example at yourhost\moodle\mod . This will include folders db,docs and all the subfolders located under pics.
  4. Copy the file called "certificate.php" in the folder called "yourLangfolder" to your language folder, for example yourhost\moodle\lang\en. Note: It is not necessary to move the lang file into the Moodle lang folder, the certificate lang folder can stay in the mod/certificate folder.
  5. Go to your Moodle, open up the administation block, configuration. Moodle knows something has been added and it will proceed to install the certificate plugin module.

Settings

Help buttons give more information about each setting.

File:Certificate Settings page.JPG
Moodle 1.6 Certificate Setting Page
File:Certificate1 8 Settings page top.JPG
Moodle 1.8 Certificate Settings

Tips & Tricks

  • Want to indicate specific credits to display for a course? Use the Course ID field to record this information. For example "IS101- CREDIT HOURS 5.0" or simply "5.0 CEUs"

If you are using your own theme you have to put the icon.gif inside a folder called certificate and put in your mod folder image

Lesson dependency trick 1

Many Moodlers issue a certificate upon sucessful completion of a course. For those who use Questions in a Lesson to determine if a student can receive a certificate, here is one way to hide the certificate until the student passes. At the end of a lesson we will provide the student an option to select a link that will print a hidden certificate activity. The only non standard Moodle feature this uses is the Certificate module itself. Lesson dependency is available from 1.6 onward.

  • Create a Certificate activity. Hide it.
  • Create a lesson. We will call it "Certificate Qualification". This is the lesson that needs to be passed to get a certificate. We might add questions to this lesson as a means to automatically determine that student qualifies for a certificate.
  • Create another lesson. We will call it "Certificate Gateway". In lesson settings make it dependent upon the "Certificate Qualification". For example we might say a student must answer 80% of the questions correctly. Still in lesson setting go to the link to activity setting and link it to Certificate.

Student view of the above example. The student will see a course with 2 lessons. If they try to enter the Certificate Gateway Lesson, first, they will be told that they must pass the Certificate Qualification Lesson with a score of 80% or higher. When the student takes the Certificate Qualification Lesson and only scores 70%, they will not be able to take the Certificate Gateway Lesson. The only way they can get to the certificate is to qualify to take the Certificate Gateway Lesson.

Important Note: For this trick to work you must have Show Grades set to Yes in the Course settings page or this trick won't work (and you'll get very frustrated wondering why :) )

See also