Badges become credentials, and every notification email gets a design

Released on 25 and 26 October.

Badges as credentials

Each badge a learner earns is now an Open Badges 3.0 credential, signed the same way as certificates. Earned trophies have a Digital credential button that opens the medal, downloads of the badge image and the credential file, Add to a wallet, and a link to the public verify page. Revoking an award revokes its credential, and a badge awarded again gets a new one. The badge designer decides whether a badge issues credentials at all.

Award by hand, to many

A badge can be marked Manual, so that an admin awards it instead of a rule. The award sheet takes up to 100 learners or a whole cohort and an optional reason, and its answer lists anyone skipped and why. The award log now opens each award, shows who gave a manual award and why, and labels rows Granted or Revoked.

Emails that arrive

Badge and achievement emails had never been set up, so every one failed to send. They now carry the medal, the badge name in the learner’s language and a link to the credential. Admins choose per award whether to email, can resend one, and can turn a badge’s email off. 17 more notification emails get the same design, among them a goal reached, an assessment not passed, replies, likes and event changes, and each has its own switch in notification settings. Platform admins can preview every email template with sample data, at desktop and phone width.

Also in this release

Added

• A badge can pin itself to a learner’s profile on its first award, up to three.
• A badge can tell the learner’s cohort mates in the app when it is awarded.
• Hovering a trophy shows its description, locked or earned.
• The home page lists Open Badges 3.0 beside SCORM, xAPI and LTI 1.3.

Changed

• Enrollments, progress, attempts and a learner’s other personal records show to a workspace only while the learner is a member of it.
• Badges and achievements created on a workspace’s address belong to that workspace.
• An achievement that grants a badge sends one email, not two.

Fixed

• Certificate emails went out twice, and the second one greeted the learner by their language code.
• The actions in the credential dialog were cut off.
• Verify pages could show the wrong date for an award made near midnight.
• On phones, the notification list stayed open over the page after a tap.
• Email subjects showed & instead of &.