What are the different ways to issue badges?

Manual issuing

The badge issuer sends a badge to one or several earners.

This is the traditional way to issue a badge. After some achievement of your students, partners, employees, colleagues, etc., you decide to award them a badge. You collect earners’ e-mail addresses, click on the badge you wish to issue (Issuer tools → Issue badge), fill the e-mail list in the select recipients text box, and issue the badge.

A variation of this manual way to push badges to earners can be automatic when you have installed the OBF issuer plugin in an LMS system. For example, with the Moodle OBF plugin a preselected badge can be automatically issued when a student completes a course or a program in TotaraLMS.

When you decide to push badges to your earners remember to tell them what an Open Badge is, and why they are getting it. This way it’s more likely that badges are accepted by earners, and it’s more beneficial for the earner.

Applying for a badge

In this case the earner is proactive and requests the badge by filling in evidence in a badge application. After assessing the application submitted by the earner, the issuer, who is in this case a reviewer, can accept and issue or reject the application. In OBF, a badge application is built by a creator in the Creator tools → Badge applications → Create new badge application section, but it can be activated (displayed to potential earners) and managed by users in the Issuer tools > Review application section.

Milestone badges

The third way to issue badges in OBF is by using the milestone badge feature in the Creator tools menu. A milestone badge is a chain of badges setting a pathway for the earners. The idea is that the milestone badge is issued automatically when the “smaller” badges required have been earned by the earner. You can find more detailed instructions on creating milestone badges from this help document (Creator tools → Milestone badges).