Hi Peter:
Another option is to use a plugin to a dedicated badge issuing platform such as Open Badge Factory out of Finland.
A strategy like this has other advantages in addition to avoiding "badge rot", such as:
- avoiding "badge fragmentation": the ability to develop a more centralized, coherent institutional badge strategy vs. course level implementations that can be difficult to maintain and replicate
- "blended badging": badge in other ways in addition to Moodle (face-to-face, eportfolio, other platforms, etc.)
- the increased functionality and more ambitious road map that comes from a dedicated platform vs. a module. For example, stacked Milestone badges, increased issuing flexibility, better reporting, etc.
- simply swapping plugins when you change LMS platforms (assuming your new LMS also has a plugin or you can get one developed)
Your sustainability cost would then be maintaining an account in Open Badge Factory vs. maintaining a rump Moodle server.
Apologies if this seems like an advertisement. There may be other badging platforms that connect to Moodle, but I only know about the Open Badge Factory one.