Creating Badges

Badges in GradeCraft can help you control students progress through a course, reward actions or achievements in a class or build belonging between students.  If you are new to badges, you may want to start here by learning more about how GradeCraft uses badges.

 

 

To enable badges 

To get started with badges, you may first want to make sure they have been enabled. 

  1. Click on Course Settings from the left hand navigation bar.
  2. Find the "Enable Features" section of the course settings page. There will be a box for "Badges" and a checkbox in the upper right hand corner of the box. If the box is checked, badges are enabled.  If not checked, click the box to enable badges. 

  3. Once badges have been enabled, a link for “Badges” will appear in the left hand menu in the “Setup” group. 

  4. Click on "Badges" from the navigation bar.

​​​​​​​

The Badges screen shows all badges that are available for an instructor to award, point values, lock conditions (hover over the key and lock logos to see the details), and how many people have earned the badge. Click on the name of a badge to see who has earned the badge. 

 

To create a new badge

  1. Click the "+ Add a New Badge" button in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
  2. There are a lot of options for badges!  In the new badge screen you can configure all of the following:

    Basic Info
    Points Awarded:  Badges do not have to be worth points (can be left blank).  But if you did want them to award points, specify that here. 

    Icon:  An image to represent your badge. Badges appear in different sizes in GradeCraft. Recommended size is 150px x 150px or larger. Only image files (.png, .jpg, etc) will be accepted. 

    Description:  A good place to give a basic description of what the badge is and how a student can achieve it. 

    Attachments:  You might have a badge that has a complex series of unlocks or multiple requirements for students to complete.  You can add an attachment with additional information that is viewable to anyone able to see the badge. 

    Settings
    Visible:  Is this badge visible to students ahead of time? Sometimes you might want to award something to a student without having them know ahead of time that the badge existed.  If a badge is not visible, students do not see the description or attachments until they have been awarded the badge. 

    Multi-Award:  Badges can be given to students more than one time.  For example, you could create a badge for asking a question in class, or for taking a risk with an assignment.

    Student-Awardable:  You can allow students to award badges to other students. Using a collaborative project?  Allow students to give badges for being a good team member!

  3. Badges can be configured with locks and unlocks.  That is to say, they can be configured so that a student cannot unlock a badge until a particular criteria has been met.  For example, you could create a badge for good attendance that is unlocked after a student has attended 80% of the class sessions. 
  4. Finally, if unlock conditions are being used, badges can be configured to auto-award when the unlock conditions are achieved by a student. On the "unlock conditions" tab, under "visibility settings" check the box Badge Automatically Awarded After Unlock to enable this feature.

 

Need more help? No worries! Check out the Related Articles on the right or email us at help@gradecraft.com for personal assistance. 
Print Article