Presentation by Barry Dahl at Brightspace Connection. First presented at Camosun College for the British Columbia Connection on Nov. 10, 2017.

1. Badges and Certificates with
the Brightspace Awards Tool
Barry Dahl, Sr. Community Manager
for the Brightspace Teaching and Learning Community

2. Session Agenda
1. Why Awards?
2. What are Awards in Brightspace?
3. What are Open Badges and Mozilla Backpack?
4. Creating and Giving Awards
5. Conventional Uses of Awards
6. Less Conventional Uses of Awards

3. Why Awards – a Personal Story (YMMV)

4. Motivating? Yes, no, maybe so?

5. A = B + C
Awards = Badges + Certificates

6. Mozilla Backpack
• Open Badges enable you
to take your learning with
you, wherever you go,
building a rich picture of
your lifelong learning
journey.
• The Backpack lets you store the Open Badges you earn,
and share them between platforms, anywhere on the web.

7. Add Existing Awards to Your Course
• Under the Course
Awards tab, you can
add any available
awards to your class.
• This makes them
available for you to
then issue to your
students.

8. Creating Badges in D2L
• On the Course
Awards tab, click
the
• You now have the
option of creating
a new award, in
addition to issuing
an existing award.

9. Create a New Badge
• If you choose to create a new badge, you can either upload your
badge image, or use the Badge Creator tool.
• There are 6 fields to
choose from:
• Curved text
• Badge Text (up to 3 lines)
• Icons (can also upload
your own)
• Inner shapes
• Shapes (overall or outer
shape of the badge)

10. Issue an Existing Award
• On the Classlist
Awards page, you
can easily see the
awards already
issued to each
student
• You can also
select students to
receive new
awards through
manual issue.

11. Issue to One or More Students
• Select which award
to issue
• Enter the evidence
or reason that they
earned the award.
This info carries
with the badge if
they export it.

12. Send a Badge from
Brightspace to Backpack
• After you’ve been awarded a
badge in Brightspace, you can
share that badge three different
ways:
• Send to D2L Profile
• Send to D2L ePortfolio
• Send to Mozilla Backpack

13. Conventional Uses of Awards
• To reward student learning
• How different from a transcript?
• How useful after the class?

14. Examples of Course Requirements
Badges

15. Earned Badge Pop-up

16. Student View of My Awards

17. Less Conventional Uses of Awards - 1
1. Ways to use Awards to reward student behaviors
2. Ways to use Awards to document employee
Professional Learning or mandatory training
3. Ways to use Awards for documenting off-transcript
student learning
4. Ways to use Awards for accomplishing goals
5. Ways to use Awards for the fun of it

18. 1. Reward Student Behaviors
• Awards can be used to encourage
and reward student behaviors that
are desirable to the institution.
• In this example, a volunteer badge
can be awarded to students who
meet your criteria.
• Students can share this badge with
potential employers, or other
interested parties.

19. More Behavior Examples
• How about these ideas?
• Extra-curricular activities
• Attending Student Success
Days, or similar
• Course improvements
• Helping others

20. 1. Ways to use Awards to reward student behaviors
2. Ways to use Awards to document employee
Professional Learning or mandatory training
3. Ways to use Awards for documenting off-transcript
student learning
4. Ways to use Awards for accomplishing goals
5. Ways to use Awards for the fun of it
Less Conventional Uses of Awards - 2

21. 2. Document Professional Learning
• Faculty workshops?
• Particular skills
learned:
• Accessibility
• Online Teaching
• Teaching with Technology
• Pedagogical techniques
• Etc, etc

22. Encourage Continuous Learning
• Laddering works with students, and it can work with
employees also.

23. Employee Compliance Training
• With a range of laws that regulate
campus life almost as divergent as the
consumers they serve, it’s up to
educators to address the needs of all:
from diversity and harassment training,
Title IX, FERPA, violence against
women, child abuse prevention and
reporting, and so much more.
• Employee ePortfolios can be updated
with Awards to identify those receiving
training.

24. 1. Ways to use Awards to reward student behaviors
2. Ways to use Awards to document employee
Professional Learning or mandatory training
3. Ways to use Awards for documenting off-transcript
student learning
4. Ways to use Awards for accomplishing goals
5. Ways to use Awards for the fun of it
Less Conventional Uses of Awards - 3

25. 3. Document off-transcript student learning
• Many things are not captured on a student transcript
• Consider badges and certificates for
• Soft skills
• Critical thinking
• Problem-solving
• Attention to detail
• Leadership or teamwork skills
• Technology skills
• Skills learned on internships
• Job shadowing

26. 1. Ways to use Awards to reward student behaviors
2. Ways to use Awards to document employee
Professional Learning or mandatory training
3. Ways to use Awards for documenting off-transcript
student learning
4. Ways to use Awards for accomplishing goals
5. Ways to use Awards for the fun of it
Less Conventional Uses of Awards - 4

27. 4. Use Awards for Goals Accomplished

28. 1. Ways to use Awards to reward student behaviors
2. Ways to use Awards to document employee
Professional Learning or mandatory training
3. Ways to use Awards for documenting off-transcript
student learning
4. Ways to use Awards for accomplishing goals
5. Ways to use Awards for the fun of it
Less Conventional Uses of Awards - 5

29. 5. Use Awards for Fun
• Maybe once in a while you just need to lighten up

30. Awards Release Conditions
Released in March 2016, Version 10.5.7
Release conditions related to Awards – Badges and
Certificates
Example: Release Content, News, etc. for someone who
has earned a particular badge or certificate.
NOTE!! This will NOT include release conditions for
someone who has NOT earned a particular award.

31. PIE Items Related to Awards
• D2707: Include Awards in Import/Export/Copy
Components Tool (65 votes)
• D2818: Awards Tool Leaderboard (41 votes)
• D3483: Awards Report Export (28)
• D2682: Awards Tool Widget (27)
• D4128: Copy Awards with Course (20)

32. Q & A