Just getting started with badges, and am wondering if it is a requirement for students to have an email account in order to be awarded badges from the badges backpack? If it is not a requirement, then do I need to do anything special to set up students on their badges backpack who do not have email?
I am a teacher who teaches younger students, and not all of them have email accounts.
Without the email address, I think the badges have much less use. In my mind, the point of the badge is to create a record of accomplishment hooked to an identity. Without an associated email address, it would be difficult to confirm an identity.
Thanks,
Jason
Doug
OpenBadges currently defines the "recipient" of a badge only by an email address.
Mozilla's Backpack (the only one currently supported in Moodle) requires you to use Persona, their identity mechanism, which in turn is linked to an email account that it has validated. All the external backpacks I have seen so far require some sort of email address.
You can of course still issue badges to students in Moodle which will live on their Moodle profile in the Badges area without putting them in an external backpack at all.
I presume you are using some sort of made-up email for the Moodle accounts of students who have no real email address?
If so, be aware that when you issue a badge that it is valid only for that email address. Currently, Mozilla's Backpack will only allow you to upload a badge that was issued with the same email address as you are using for the backpack.
By default, Moodle uses the user's Moodle email address for a badge. But, if the user has connected their external backpack to Moodle (in Administration > My profile settings> Badges > My backpack settings > Email address) with a different address, it will use that one instead as the badge recipient.
Hi Randy
Sorry to revive an old thread; but I have just come across the issue of badges being tied to a users Moodle email by default and have then found your post regarding setting up a different email address for their backpack.
What are your thoughts on the prominence of this setting? Would it be better to have it in the main profile along with the other optional web IDs? Also is there any possibility of a user "regenerating" their badges (maybe one time only?) if they have had badges issued but had not yet set their backpack ID?
Just a few thoughts...
Jon
I agree it should be more prominent. For now, it is a training issue mostly.
The good news is that the recipient email address is added to the badge only at the moment of "baking," that is, downloading or copying to the backpack.
So by disconnecting one backpack and then connecting another backpack with a different email address, you can issue yourself the same badge to more than one email address.
A nice enhancement would be to explicitly show the user which email address Moodle is going to put in the badge.
Okay... So the user has to have an email address to be issued a badge. Can you turn off the emails sent to the user when they earn a badge though? A course we are building for doctors, pharmacists, and nurses are not interested in having their inbox fill up with badge notifications. It seems a little silly that there is no setting to turn off email notifications...
I suggested in a comment in one of the threads here and also in this Tracker https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-39923 that Badges go through the standard Messaging outputs so users could control their output just like any other item.
Chime in on the tracker comment it and hopefully it will get assigned and handled.
