Creating a milestone badge

About milestone badges

A milestone badge (or meta badge) is a “super badge” associated with a collection of “smaller” badges. A milestone badge is automatically awarded to an earner when all or part of required badges in the pathway have been issued.

The role of a milestone badge in the badge system is determined by the issuer. It can be the final step in a pathway, it can express access to a “higher level”, or it can be a compilation or a summary badge.

Please note that required badges in the pathway can be issued in any order. This makes it possible for earners to progress at their own pace.

NB! It’s also possible to issue a milestone badge as a single badge even if the badges associated with the milestone badge have not been accomplished by the badge earner.

Milestone badges can be organised with categories in the same way as ordinary badges.

Creating a milestone badge 

Create the milestone badge as a regular single badge first (see Creating a new badge in instructions). No information about the badges associated with the milestone badge is automatically added to the milestone badge, so if you want some information to be displayed about these badges in the milestone badge as well, this information should be written for example in the criteria page of the milestone badge.

After this, click Creator tools and choose Milestone badges. Click Create new milestone badge. Choose a badge from your badge library. Then add the required badges in the pathway which need to be earned for the milestone badge. It’s possible to require specific badges to be earned to get the milestone badge (all), or a specific amount of badges from a group of badges (for example, three badges out of five need to be earned in order to get the milestone badge). Save the new milestone badge at the end.

Issuing a milestone badge 

When a badge related to a milestone badge is issued, an earner can see all the badges required for the milestone badge on the acceptance page. The earner can easily see all badges already earned and those still needed. Once the earner has been awarded the last badge, the milestone badge is also issued automatically.

The term milestone badge is significant only to badge creators and issuers. From an earner’s point of view, a milestone badge is a normal badge, which contains information about the path the user has taken and her/his achievements.

For earners, it would be helpful to make milestone badges differ from regular badges. Creators can, for example, choose differently styled images, or append criteria from required badges to the milestone badge.

The flexible badge implementation of OBF makes it possible to build hierarchical milestone badges using other milestones.