Badges

Badges

Overview

A badge is a digital award to recognize learner or student progress, skills, and achievements. Badges help track learner accomplishments and showcase achievements. Badges are a helpful way to motivate learners and encourage learning outcomes.

The platform has robust badge features available to instructors, teachers, and administrators: 
  1. Create custom badges: The platform has built-in functionality to create your own custom badges. You can customize the shape, image, text and color of badges.
  2. Share badges: Badges are stored as a resource and can be shared through the resources library.
  3. Award badges: Award badges to users when they complete learning activities. 
    1. Rules: Create rules to award badges.
    2. Games: Award badges in course or class games. 
  4. Create badge reports: Create custom reports to track and monitor badge awards.

Creating a badge

To create a badge:

  1. Click Resources from the primary navigation menu.
  2. Click Add from the fly-out menu.
  3. Click Badge.
Resources, Add resource page with Badge highlighted

The Badge creator pop-up displays, and is divided into tabs to help you build your badge.  The following sections cover each tab in more detail.

Overview

The Overview tab allows you to customize basic features of your badge.

  1. Name the badge.
  2. Enter a description for the badge.
  3. Identify the resource library where the badge will be saved.
Idea
Note that the right side of the badge creator displays a preview of the final badge design. The final design updates as you make changes to the badge.
Resources, Add resource, Badge creator overview page

The Gallery tab allows you to choose from many existing badge designs. 

  1. Click the arrows to scroll through a wide variety of designs.
  2. Click the design you like best. Note that the final design preview is updated.
  3. If you are satisfied with your badge, click Save. You have created a badge!
Resources, Add resource, Badge creator Gallery page

Creator

If you would prefer to create a more customized badge, you can continue on to the Creator tab. 

  1. Click the Creator tab, and note that more tabs appear to further customize your badge.
    1. Choose an existing image for the center of the badge.
    2. Or click Use custom SVG image to upload a custom svg file from your computer, which can be further customized.
      1. Please note that the format of the custom image has to be .svg format and 220 x 220 pixels. 
      2. There are many tools that can be used to create SVG images or to convert them to SVG. Here are some examples:
        1. http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/svg-tools/ 
        2. http://editor.method.ac/ 
        3. Svg converter: http://pngtosvg.com/  
        4. Svg converter: https://convertio.co/png-svg/  
        5. Svg converter: http://image.online-convert.com/convert-to-svg 
Resources, Add resource, Badge creator Creator image page

    Shape

    The Shape tab allows you to select a shape for the badge.
    1. Click the Shape tab.
    2. Click a shape to appear around the badge.
      1. If you do not want a shape around your badge, click the first N/A image.
    Resources, Add resource, Badge creator Shape page

    Border

    The Border tab allows you to customize the border design of the badge.

    Resources, Add resource, Badge creator Border page

    Text

    The Text tab allows you to:

    1. Add, remove, and customize banner text that appears on the badge.
    2. Add, remove, and customize message text that displays below the banner.
    Resources, Add resource, Badge creator Text page

    Colors

    The Colors tab allows you to bring your svg image to life! You can define custom colors for an existing badge shape you selected, or for the svg image you uploaded. Click or type in the color picker to change the color of your badge:

    1. Shape
    2. Border
    3. Image
    4. Banner
    5. Banner Text.
    Color recommendations are also provided to help you quickly create a great looking badge. 
    1. When you have finished designing your badge, click Save. 

    Resources, Add resource, Badge creator Colors page


    You can access your saved badge in your resources library.
    1. Click Resources on the primary navigation menu.
    2. Click Catalog from the pop-out menu.
    3. Use the search filters to display the Resource type (Badge) and Library of your badge(s).
    Resources, Catalog page displaying Badge resource types

    To edit a badge:
    1. Click the badge in your resources catalog.
    2. Click Details.
    3. Click Edit to edit the badge.
    4. Click Delete to delete the badge.
    Resources, Gold Star Badge page with Edit and Delete icons highlighted

    Awarding badges

    There are multiple ways to award badges to learners and students.

    Info
    CYPHER for business defaults to learners. CYPHER for academia defaults to students. Please note the terms learners and students are interchangeable in this article.
    To manually award a badge to learners and students:
    1. Access a course or class.
    2. Click Learners from the course navigation menu.
      1. Academia platform users will click Students from the class navigation menu.
    3. Select the learners.
    4. Click + Award.
    Course, Learners, Active tab with Award button highlighted

    1. Select the Badge radio button.
    2. Select a badge from the Badge drop-down list.
    3. Enter a note to accompany the badge.
    4. Click Save.
    Course, Learners, Award page for specific learner with a badge selected and custom message

    Each learner will receive a notification of the award.

    Learner badge drop-down notification

    To view the awards learners or students have received:

    1. Access a course or class.
    2. Click Learners from the course navigation menu.
      1. Academia platform users will click Students from the class navigation menu.
    3. The Awards column indicates each learners' awards.
    4. Click a learner's award number to view more details.
    Course, Learners, Active page with Awards column highlighted

    The learner/student's Awards page displays.

    1. Each award displays, along with the date the learner earned the award.

    Course, Learners, individual learner's Awards page

    Learners can view their awards in a variety of ways.
    1. Awards are listed on the primary profile page.
      1. Learners click their profile picture.
      2. Awards are listed in the learner's Awards section.
    Learners profile page with Awards highlighted

    1. The Awards page:
      1. Learners click their profile picture.
      2. Learners click Awards from the profile navigation menu.

    Learner profile, Awards tab
    1. Learners can also view awards on the Awards widget on the home page or on a course or class landing page.
    Info
    Awards widgets may or may not display based on the setup of your platform.

    Awards widget

    Rules that award badges

    Another way to award badges to learners and students is by using rules. You can add rules that award badges for courses/classes, modules/lessons, assessments/assignment and groups.  

    For example, you can create a rule that awards a badge when a course is completed.
    To create a completion badge rule:
    1. Access a course or class.
    2. Click Admin.
    3. Click Completion from the pop-out menu.
    4. Click + Add under the Completion actions heading.
    5. Click the Awards tab.
    6. Click Award Badge. 
    Course, Admin, Completion, Add action pop-up, Awards tab

    The Award badge pop-up displays with multiple options.

    1. Select a game if you want the award tied to a specific game. Otherwise the Game field will default to side-wide game.
      1. Learn more in the Games article.
    2. Select the badge you will award to learners.
    3. Determine a threshold percentage. If the learner or student does not reach the threshold score for the course, the badge will not be awarded.
    4. Select the type of notification: Dropdown or Popup.
    5. Select a default canned message, or create your own.
    6. Click + in the filter section to add an optional filter to the Award action. Filters can be used to further define the learners or students who are eligible for the award.
    7. Click Save.
    Course, Admin, Completion, Add action, Award badge pop-up with Game, Badge, Threshold and Type highlighted

    You have created an Award badge completion action! The Award badge now displays on the Completion actions list.

    1. Click the pencil icon to edit the action.
    2. Click the remove - icon to remove the action.

    Course, Admin, Completions, Completions action section with Award badge action highlighted

    When learners complete the course requirements, they will receive the award.

    This is an example of a popup award notification for a learner/student:
    Learner popup badge notification

    This is an example of a dropdown notification for a learner:

    Learner dropdown badge notification

    Info
    For additional information on how to add rules, visit the Rules article.

    Custom badge reports

    You can track and monitor badges that are awarded to users.

    To generate a custom report for badges:
    1. Click Reports on the primary navigation menu
    2. Click Catalog on the fly-out menu.
    3. Click + Custom Report.

    Reports, Catalog, Custom report button highlighted

    1. Add a name and description for the report.
    2. Select a library for the report.
    3. Select Badges from the Report on drop-down list.
    Reports, Catalog, Add custom report pop-up with Badges selected on the Report on drop-down list

    To setup your report:

    1. Click Columns.
    2. Select the Description and Name fields.
    Reports, Custom badge report, Setup, Columns tab

    1. Click the User awards expandable menu.
    2. Select fields you would like included on the report. In this example, the first name, last name, joined at, source type and source name fields are selected.
    3. After you have configured the report, click Run. 

    Reports, Custom badge report, Setup, Columns tab with User awards section highlighted and expanded

    The Run report pop-up displays.

    1. Select an organization.
    2. Choose HTML or CSV output.
    3. Determine if you would like to save the report in the report catalog.
    4. Determine when you would like to run the report.
    5. Add an email address to have the report sent via email.
    6. Click Run.

    Reports, Custom badge report, Run report pop-up box

    When the report is ready, you will receive a notification.
    1. Click the link in the notification to view the report.
    Reports, Custom badge report complete notification

    Your report will display all users who have earned a badge in the organization you selected.

    1. Note that the report includes the fields you previously selected.
    2. If you would like to adjust your report settings:
      1. Click Reports on the main navigation menu
      2. Select My reports.
      3. Select your badges report.
      4. Use the tabs and settings to adjust your report.
    Reports, Custom badge report HTML results with Team player highlighted



        • Related Articles

        • Course games

          Overview This article will introduce you to course games, which allow learners to earn points and badges to advance through game levels. Learners and teams can compete against each other, with point totals and rankings tracked on leaderboards. The ...

        • Course and class completion

          Overview Course and class completions are an important part of the platform, as they help track learner progress, provide records for compliance or audits, and provide data for reports. CYPHER for business defaults to courses, and CYPHER for academia ...

        • Paths

          Overview The Paths feature is a powerful and flexible way to build content. Paths offer you the same robust feature set as courses, along with the ability to add two additional types of sections: Course goals and Certificate goals. A Course goal ...

        • Resources

          Overview You can upload and display many kinds of resources on the platform, including images, video, audio, HTML, PDF, word files, and links to web resources. There are many places you can upload and share resources. Course resources: An area for ...

        • Adaptive learning

          Overview Adaptive learning allows you to tailor learning experiences to individuals based on their previous actions. This allows you to create custom experiences for learners by showing or hiding modules, lessons, sections and assessments based on ...