I have only just begun to experiment with badges so I am hoping someone can put me right here: it seems to me that if you have Openbadges enabled and you push a badge to your backpack then that badge is visible on your profile for your classmates to see? But if your teacher awards you a badge within your institution then although you can see that badge, your classmates can't. Or have I missed a setting? I am thinking of pupils in my old school (where "real" badges are very coveted) and they would be proud to show off their internal badges on their profile so others could see and also to have a bit of competition. Or else - a setting whereby each user could choose whether or not to display their institution badges. Not everyone will use Openbadges and while I appreciate that a student could push their internal badge to their backpack and it would then appear on their profile, that is an extra step that some might not want to do.
Hi Mary,
Yes you are right there is a bit of an issue here. If you set up an external backpack connection you are able to say which badges you want to display in Moodle. Since you are explicitly choosing to share those badges they appear on your profile automatically.
On the other hand we originally didn't want to automatically push badges earnt on the site straight to the profile, in order to give the user control over what was shared. So as of right now new "internal" badges are hidden from the profile by default, and must be explicitly shared to be visible.
We have subsequently realised what you say (about it requiring an extra step that people may not remember to do), so as part of some improvements to the backpack connection we've added a user setting - "Automatically show badges I earn on my profile page" which we've enabled by default. That means that:
- New badges earned from the site will appear on a user's profile by default
- They can still choose to hide individually badges (on their My Badges) page
- If they want they can have new badges default to hidden, and only show the ones the want to (by making them visible on their My Badges page).
Hopefully that addresses your point but still gives the users control over their how they show their badges.
The patch that includes this change is awaiting review here:
https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-39063
We are hopeful it will make it into 2.5.0, if not it will be in 2.5.1.
Simon