Badges FAQ

How can teachers award site badges?

By default, teachers can only award course badges. Only users with capabilities to manage badges in the system are able to do this, so if you wish teachers to award site badges you need to create a new role as follows:

Go to Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles and click 'Add a new role'
Leave 'Use role or archetype' as No role' and click the continue button
Give the role a name e.g. "Site badge awarder" and tick system as a context type where it can be assigned
Set the following capabilities to "allow": moodle/badges:awardbadge, moodle/badges:viewbadges, moodle/badges:configurecriteria
Click the button 'Create this role".

Then, assign the "Site badge awarder" role as a system role to the teachers you wish to award site badges.

Teachers with the role of "Site badge awarder" will see a link in the Administration block Site administration > Badges > Manage badges.

Can more than one teacher in a course award the same badge?

(copied from MDL-39189) It's not the user who issues the badge, but a role. Users with multiple roles will have an option to use both of them to issue badges. If the badge is awarded twice by different roles, both roles are displayed and criteria (ALL/ANY) is given. In some cases it will be required for a badge to be awarded by several different roles. When there are, let's say, three teachers in the course and they go to award a badge as a teacher, each of them will see the list of users who already got the badge from a teacher, so they won't need to award the badge again.

What's the difference between a backpack and a collection?

When you upload a badge to the Openbadges site you are adding it to your backpack, which is the general area you put your badges in (like a backpack!. You then organise them into collections (like separate little bags in your backpack) and you choose which to display on your Moodle profile. So a badge may be in your backpack and not in a collection, but it must be in your backpack before it can be in a collection (note the 'public' box must be ticked too). Collections allow you to control which badges you share with people.

A user's online backpack

Drag badges into a new collection to display on Moodle

What size is a badge?

A badge is displayed with dimensions 100 X 100 pixels. However, a larger image may be uploaded, which will then be cropped to be a square, and then resized.

Can I award a badge based on a specific grade?

There are two ways of awarding a badge based on a specific grade.

Method 1:

Set a passing grade for the quiz in the gradebook, as explained in section 1.3 of Activity completion settings.

Method 2:

Create a page resource and set the restrict access conditions so that it only appears if the user obtains a certain activity grade or course total
Set the activity completion for the page as "view"
Set the badge criteria such that the page has to be completed (i.e. viewed)

Do I have to use my Moodle email for my backpack?

No, but you have to log in via your Persona account to authenticate via your backpack, in order to ensure you are only displaying badges belonging to you.

Which roles can see which badges?

See this forum post on viewing badges

Can I change a badge image once awarded?

The short answer is 'no', but see this forum post on changing badge images for more information.

Can I revoke a badge once it has been awarded?

If a badge is awarded my mistake, it may be revoked from the 'Badge recipients' page (in Moodle 3.2 onwards). Alternatively, a badge can be deleted, as described in Managing badges.

How can I get badges with participants' profiles like on Moodle.org?

These are not badges. These are group avatars/pictures. When you create a group in your course - see the documentation on Groups - you can add a picture to represent that group. In places such as forums this picture is then displayed for each participant. If they are a member of several groups then several pictures will be displayed.

Documentation