Badges are a form of digital credential, awarded to users for the achievement or demonstration of certain skills, knowledge or behaviours.
After earning a badge, users can choose to display it publicly across a variety of social and professional networking platforms. When a badge is shared and displayed, details of the badge (such as the criteria for earning the badge and the organisation who awarded the badge) are shown.
Within Totara Learn, there are two types of badges:
- Site badges: Available to all users within a site and awarded for activities or criteria at the system level - such as completing a program or adding information to a user profile field.
- Course badges: Available to users enrolled in a course and awarded for activities, behaviours or actions within course - such as completing an activity or the course.
Enabling badges
The badges functionality is enabled by default but may be disabled or re-enabled within Advanced features via the Site administration menu.
Badge settings
Site administrators and users with capability badges:manageglobalsettings can configure the general Badge settings via the Badges area under the Site administration menu.
These options set the default values for fields in a new badge form, but can be changed by a badge creator if necessary.
| Default badge issuer name | Set the name of the issuer. | The name will appear where the badges are displayed and may be the name of a specific individual (such as a trainer) or the name of a group or organisation. |
| Set the email address of the issuer. | This email address will be displayed where an individual is viewing the details of a displayed badge. | |
| Salt for hashing recipient's email address | Using a hash allows backpack services to confirm the badge earner without having to expose their email address. This setting should only use numbers and letters. | For recipient verification purposes, please avoid changing this setting once issuing badges. |
| Enable course badges | Allow badges to be created and awarded in the course context. | Course managers and editing trainers will be able to create their own course level badges. |
The Totara Academy has a whole course dedicated to using Open badges in Totara Learn. Here you can learn more on how to use the open badges, see best practice, and give it a go yourself.
