Badges and Endorsements

Administrator Overview

Endorsements work alongside Competencies and give learners the opportunity for recognition of their peers skills and completion of linked activities. Once endorsed, the learner receives a badge – to show they have received the competency. This functionality was designed specifically for a MOOC environment and should be implemented by the same token. This document will explain the steps to setting up the feature and as well as using it from a learning perspective. To begin, ensure the Competency Endorsements page is added to your Custom Menu. Example code:

1 Setup – Competencies

1. Ensure that the Competency Management plugin is turned on, on the Global tenant (you will need a Janison staff member to do this)
2. You will see several new menu items appear under your Manage Learning, navigate to here and select the Manage Competencies menu item

For the purpose of setting up endorsements and badges we will be adding a new competency

3. Select the Actions menu and click Add Competency
4. On the competency create page, fill in the mandatory information e.g. name and ID

• • You can enter extra information on fields that aren’t mandatory if you wish:

• • • Description – give the competency a description
    • Validity Period – give the competency a validity period

Note: Validity Period is the period in which the competency is valid for the user e.g. this competency is valid for 1 year after completion by the user.

• • Active – whether the competency is active or inactive
  • Nationally Recognised – if the competency is nationally recognised in Australia
  • Competency Icon – the icon that represents the competency, this is usually referred to as a Badge

5. Select Save Competency
6. You will see your competency appear on the Endorsement page that you have added to the menu at the beginning of the tutorial

2 Setup – Enable Endorsements

There is a second part to setting up a competency which requires Enabling. Endorsements. Endorsements is what will allow you to link your competency to activities. Activities are effectively just pages inside a module but they are what will allow your learners to achieve the badge.

1. Under the Settings menu select the item titled Competency Settings.
2. You will need to Enable Endorsements in order to link your activities. There are extra options on this page to:

• • Add FAQs and an FAQ URL for your Competency Endorsement page:
    • The FAQ content will appear as a pop-up when selected.

• • • The FAQ URL is intended for custom page use.
  • Issue a badge notification email – the email address you choose will get sent an email saying the person who is receiving credit and for what competency. This is governed by a Message Template and can be altered to fit your organisation or business.

3. Now that you have enabled endorsements, return to the competency you previously created to link your activities (Manage Learning > Manage Competencies).
4. You will now see there is an extra option on your competency titled Endorsement Settings.

5. To get started, click Enable Endorsement.

3 Setup – Endorsement Settings

Step 1: Minimum Activity

You can set a minimum number of Activities (pages) the learner must complete before they are allowed to apply for endorsement (this will be explained later). If the field is left blank, this will mean that learners can apply for endorsement at any one time. Otherwise; this could be used e.g. you have 5 activities linked, but the learner only needs to complete 1 to solicit endorsement.

Step 2: Linked Activities

This is the part where you actually link your activities (remember, these are pages). Simply search for the page you want to link and click the Add button.

Step 3: Evidence

Learners can provide a form of evidence for others to base their endorsement upon, to do this you must have LinkedIn or Pathbrite configured in your CLS. If you don’t, the checkbox’s will not be checkable. This is not required to implement the endorsement functionality.

Step 4: Evaluation Instructions

You can provide instructions for endorsers (these are also referred to as peers, but are technically just users) on how to endorse someone. Or explain why they should endorse another user. These instructions will appear as a rubric when endorsing another user.

Step 5: External Badge Settings

You can specify an external badge that the learner will receive if they earn an endorsement. This is mostly used to link conventions that might be used outside of the CLS.

Learner Overview

This section of the document will detail the learners experience when dealing with endorsements. A rundown of all the relevant sections is below:

1 Workflow – Complete Linked Activities and Apply for Endorsement

To be able to apply for endorsement a learner must first complete any linked activities to the competency. Since the linked activities are pages (in a module) you’ll want to make sure the learner is enrolled in the course catalogue before the learner can start to achieve endorsement. After the learner has completed the activity the Evidence submitted block icon will change to a tick, an Apply button will also appear on the right hand side. When the learner clicks on the apply button – it will confirm they have applied for endorsement.

2 Workflow – Endorse Other Learners

1. After a learner has applied for endorsement, the Endorse link will light up on other users Endorsements page.

2. After selecting this they will be prompted to either endorse the user or not give them endorsement yet – and give them feedback regarding either one.

• Give Endorsement – if they give their ‘peer’ endorsement, this will show up on the peers endorsements page.

 

• Not Yet – keeps the other learners on the list to be endorsed but pushes them to the back of the list. Note: Users can only endorse one peer at a time.

3 Workflow – Diagram of Workflow

Extended – People

This explanation concludes by consolidating the way in which endorsements and badges work in conjunction with the People page. The only setup required to have the People page be made visible is to add it to your custom menu using the following XML: This page will show learners how many badges, and which badges their peers have acquired and how many people have endorsed them against the badge. As per the image above you can see Learner 1 has earned two badges, and even though has applied for endorsement for both the badges – her peers have only endorsed her for one badge. The other has (0) endorsements. Warning: This page will show every user that is in your Cloud Learning System, the page cannot be segregated between Organisations, Organisation Units or Groups. Every user in the system has the ability to endorse another learner and see that learners endorsements on the People page. Notes: Every user in the system if the permission is switched on has the ability to endorse another learner.