Important Note: Academic badges and co-curricular badges awarded by UNF and its colleges will use the Canvas Credentials platform after approval by the UNF Digital Badging Steering Committee. Please refer to our support article on Canvas Credentials for more information.
Summary
Canvas Badges (formerly Badgr) is a free and open-source platform for issuing digital badges, or microcredentials. Canvas offers two different badging frameworks: Canvas Badges Basic (Badgr) and Canvas Credentials (Badgr Pro). Both instances award badges based on predefined earning criteria. Badges are earned and awarded when specified requirements are met at the course, department, or school/college/unit level.
Canvas Badges Basic is available to be used with individual courses as a motivational/gamification tool to promote student engagement and participation. Basic badges are created and issued by the course instructor.
How to Request the LTI
Canvas Badges Basic is available to be used with all courses for the purpose of enhancing student engagement and participation. Instructors can reach out to CIRT via email (cirtlab@unf.edu) to request that Canvas Badges be installed in a course.
Note: Proposals for academic or co-curricular badges to be awarded by UNF and its colleges must be submitted to the UNF Digital Badging Steering Committee for approval.
Setting up Badges in a Course
Once Canvas Badges has been installed in a Canvas course, you should see a link to Badges in the course navigation menu. Click this link to display the Canvas Badges account interface.
Creating an Issuer
A badge issuer profile describes an organization or individual responsible for issuing badges. An issuer could represent an individual, a course or instructor, a department, school, or organization. In this case, the issuer is probably the course instructor. An issuer must be created in order to award badges to recipients. Click the Issuer tab from within the Canvas Badges account and follow the prompts to create an Issuer.
Canvas Guide: How to Create an Issuer in Canvas Badges
Creating a Badge
A digital badge is a visual symbol of accomplishment. An Open Badge is a specialized type of digital badge that contains verifiable metadata about achievements according to a common data format. When following the prompts to create a badge, you will be asked to provide information such as the badge name, a short description of what the badge represents, and the criteria that must be met in order to earn the badge. Additionally, you will create a unique badge image. The Canvas guides listed below provide step-by-step guidance.
Awarding Badges
Canvas Badges can be configured to award badges automatically based on module completion requirements. Module completion requirements can be set based on a combination of assignment grades, quiz scores, submission, content viewed, and module prerequisites. Badges are linked to Canvas modules using the Canvas Badges LTI and are awarded based on the completion requirements the module has configured.
First: Setting Module Completion Requirements
Next: Automatically awarding badges in Canvas courses
Although Canvas Badges awards badges automatically in Canvas courses, instructors or students must request a badge check from the Canvas Badges server to trigger awards.
Then: Triggering badge awards in Canvas courses
A work-around for the above step is to add a badge as an external tool within a module. By doing this, students will be able to claim the badge while progressing through a module. This will alleviate the need to trigger badge awards from the Badges Progress page because students will be able to claim their badge within the module.
Optional: Award badges in a module
Alternately, badges can be awarded manually. Refer to the following guides for steps on manually awarding badges to individuals or in bulk.
Note: Canvas Badges Basics users are limited to 50 awards per CSV file for bulk upload.
Troubleshooting
Instructure hosts a variety of articles that address common issues encountered with Canvas Badges, which can be found in the Troubleshooting section of the Canvas Badges guides. As always, instructors can reach out directly to CIRT (cirtlab@unf.edu) to request individualized support.
