Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Ian Guest -
Number of replies: 7

I can see the sense in extending this module, rather than rewriting (repeating?) the code. A couple of observations then:

  1. Would I be right in thinking there will be a continued need for the Certificate module in addition to the Badge Manager/Admin.? I assume there will still be institutions/users who will have need of 'paper'-based evidence of completion. If so, I'd reiterate Gavin's observation and ask can(should) a single Certificate/Badge module administer and manage both Certificates and Badges?
  2. Can(should?) the metadata associated with a Badge be repurposed/reused to provide data to populate fields used to construct a Certificate?

From an end user's PoV, I can see advantages to having either separate or integrated modules. Where teachers/instructors are just issuing either Certificate or Badge, separate modules might be better just for simplicity's sake; if they're potentially issuing both, then an integrated module would probably be preferred. Similarly, Admins might prefer to have functionality separated (for resilience) or integrated (easy of implementation/upgrade).


Until Moodle HQ or the certificate module maintainer indicate what their preference is, I guess things are moot?

And with that, I guess I'll remain unhelpfully on the fence. wink

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In reply to Ian Guest

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Floyd Saner -

From my experience working with clients (both higher ed and business) there is a definite need to be able to differentiate between certificates and badges.  I don't know how this affects separate or integrated modules, but certificates must remain.

While the code is being reviewed/changed, is it possible to make the certificate more easily customized at the course level?  For example, be able to include images, watermarks, signatures, etc. from a direct upload on the certificate page?  Or another option would be to upload an image and specify the page location of the signature, graphic, etc. 

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Simon Coggins -

Agreed that the certificate module functionality needs to continue to be available.

Simon

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In reply to Ian Guest

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Simon Coggins -

For 1, yes we would definitely need to keep the current certificate functionality available - if we did go down that route then the activity creator would need to choose between badge and traditional (PDF) certificate when they create the activity.

I've sent a message to Mark Nelson (the certificate module maintainer) to get his views - I agree there are some advantages of a separate module but we thought it was worth at least floating the idea given the similarities. We'll add a section to the wiki page with some pros and cons.

For 2, given that the activity creator would be choosing between creating a badge or a certificate, any metadata that is available for creating the badge is also available for the certificate. However given the different methods of constructing badges vs. certificates I'm not sure there would be much scope for code reuse.

Simon

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In reply to Simon Coggins

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Jason Hardin -

One thing to consider with any images is that they need to be uploadable via a user interface and not require server access.  Certificate in the past has required server access to the code base instead of a user interface to upload images.  This thinking works fine for a single instance of Moodle where the Moodle admin does have access to the web server or the svn repo.  This does not scale when you get into a hosted solution.

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In reply to Jason Hardin

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Floyd Saner -

@Jason:  I totally agree about the need to upload certificate and badge images and other content (signature, border, company name) through a user interface.  It would be nice to be able to pass parameters to a pdf file (e.g. student name, course title, date), but I think that is not possible.

Does anyone have ideas about how a certificate or badge design might be created through a user interface form?

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Mark Nelson -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers

Yeh, the certificate module maintainer really needs to get his act together. Where do I file an official complaint? big grin

Jokes aside, I love the idea about integrating open badges with Moodle.

Regarding the certificate module, I am currently re-writing how the certificate module works. With the ability to add as many text/image items as you want to the certificate, as well as specifying the position from within the actual certificate settings. I am getting rid of the need for the user to FTP to the mod directory and create a new type/upload more images etc. You can keep checking https://github.com/markn86/moodle-mod_certificate for updates. Once I have finished these changes that will get rid of a lot of the bloat on the settings page with the unnecessary fields, whether or not this provides enough room for the badges settings without the activity settings page becoming too bloated I am not sure without looking into more detail about what would be needed. So, from a technical perspective it is possible, but whether or not it makes sense is a different question. Would a teacher automatically assume the certificate module would be capable of issuing badges as well? What happens when they do not want a PDF to be generated, but just the badge(s)? Do those settings remain blank or are they hidden? If a teacher did want to generate a PDF and create badges would creating two activities the user had to click on too much? Should it all be combined into one? I have a lot of questions and no real definite answer. Would be good to know what you all think.

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In reply to Mark Nelson

Re: Open Badges and Moodle - Certificate Module

by Simon Coggins -

Hi Mark,

All good questions. I think the more we've looked into it the less sensible it's becoming to combine them into one module. Although at first glance they have similarities it seems that the bulk of the actual code in certificate module is generating the certificates themselves, and that code would all need to be different because of the PNG requirement for badges.

The other area where I saw some overlap was the criteria for assigning badges/criteria, but since 2.x the certificate module seems to just use activity completion anyway, so again there's no real benefit in combining them to save code duplication.

So I think probably a separate module makes sense!

Simon

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