Automatically award a badge on module completion in Canvas
Pinpoint utilizes Badges awarded through Canvas Badges to track and grant users permission to use tools in a makerspace. These Badges can be granted in a few different ways:
- Recommended: Automatically award module completion: This is the easiest way to award a badge, and what's covered in this document and recommended by Pinpoint. After a user completes a module in Canvas a badge is awarded automatically.
- Manually award: A staff member for the UMD Makerspace Initiative issuer in Canvas Badges can manually award a badge to a user.
- Scripting: In the case a more nuanced or detailed award scheme is needed, you could create a script that checks for canvas module/assignment completion, and awards badges based on custom conditions. This is not officially supported by the Pinpoint team and is recommended only if you're comfortable with APIs and custom scripting.
Sign in to Canvas Badges
Sign into Canvas Badges and head to the issuers' page. If you do not see the UMD Makerspace Initiative issuer, reach out to make@umd.edu to be added.
Find your group and add a badge
After selecting the Makerspace Initiative issuer, you should see a tab at the top for groups. Select that, and select your group. If you don't see your group, reach out to make@umd.edu to have one created. View the official Canvas Badges Groups documentation here.
Groups must be associated with a course on Canvas. You can check that a group is associated with a course by clicking on the group, selecting setup, and then the details tab. Scrolling down will reveal the course associated with the group.
By default when you open a group you should see the badges progress tab for the group. If the Badge you want to issue is here, you can continue to step 3. Otherwise, you'll need to add a badge to the group. This can be done by going to the setup tab, selecting the badges tab, clicking the Add Badge button at the top right and then by selecting an existing badge for your issuer. New badges should be proposed via email to the Makerspace Initiative stakeholders at make@umd.edu before being created.
Associate a badge with a module in Canvas
Once within a group, under the badges tab select Canvas course badges. Here, you will see all the modules in the course tied to your group. You will only see modules for the course(s) tied to your group. If you don't see your module of interest, double-check that your course exists in this group. If you just added a module, it will take a few minutes for it to populate in Canvas Badges
Find your module, and select the dropdown next to it under Badge. Select the badge you want to award to a user after completing your module. You can set the requirement under Requirement for receiving the badge.
You need to set up requirements for a Module to be completed on Canvas before a badge will be automatically rewarded. Check out the official documentation here.
Conclusion
And that's it! A Canvas Badge should now be awarded when a user completes your module. If you're running into issues, Canvas Badges has extensive documentation on how to award badges automatically and manually. We recommend you check those docs for more details.
Appendix and Notes
Checking badges are awarded on module completion
You can test that you set up an automatic reward properly by publishing your canvas module, and completing the module as either a student or a teacher (but not within "student view"). Within a few minutes of completing the module, your badge should be awarded.