8.8. Enabling Badging

This section describes how to enable badging in your instance of Open edX.

8.8.1. Overview

Badges provide a way for learners to share their course achievements. For courses that have badges enabled, learners receive a badge at the same time as they receive a course certificate, and have the option of sharing their badges to a badging site such as Mozilla Backpack.

Open EdX supports Open Badges, an open standard originally developed by the Mozilla Foundation. For more information about Open Badges, see http://openbadges.org/.

Enabling the badges feature on your instance of Open edX involves the following set up and configuration tasks.

Note

Before proceeding, review Guidelines for Updating the edX Platform.

8.8.2. Make Sure that Certificates are Enabled

Badge generation depends on certificate generation. Badges are automatically generated when a certificate is generated for a learner. Make sure certificates are enabled on your Open edX instance. For details, see Enabling Certificates.

8.8.3. Install Badgr Server

Badgr Server provides an API for issuing Open Badges. Follow the instructions at https://github.com/concentricsky/badgr-server to install and run Badgr Server.

Important

You must install Badgr Server at a publicly accessible IP address, to allow the Open edX LMS and services such as Mozilla Backpack to contact Badgr Server.

8.8.4. Specify a Badge Issuer for Your Organization

Log in to your installation of Badgr Server and add an issuer of Open Badges for your organization.

For information about issuing Open Badges, see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges /Onboarding-Issuer#Issuing_Badges

8.8.5. Enable Badges in Studio and the Learning Management System

  1. In the /cms/envs/common.py and /lms/envs/common.py files, set the value of ENABLE_OPENBADGES to True.

    # Enable OpenBadge support. See the BADGR_* settings later in this file.
    'ENABLE_OPENBADGES': True,
    
  2. In /lms/envs/common.py, set the values for the following parameters.

    • BADGR_API_TOKEN - a string containing the API token for the Badgr superuser account. Obtain the token from the /v1/user/auth-token page while logged in to the API as the superuser.
    • BADGR_BASE_URL - a string containing the base URL for Badgr Server. The Badgr Server must be installed at a publicly accessible IP address.
    • BADGR_ISSUER_SLUG - a string that is the slug for the Badgr issuer. The slug can be obtained from the URL of the Badgr Server page that displays the issuer. For example, in the URL http://exampleserver.com/issuer /test-issuer, the issuer slug is test-issuer.
    ############## Badgr OpenBadges generation ##############
    
    BADGR_API_TOKEN = None
    # Do not add the trailing slash here.
    BADGR_BASE_URL = "http://localhost:8005"
    BADGR_ISSUER_SLUG = "test-issuer"
    
  3. Save the /cms/envs/common.py and /lms/envs/common.py files.

  4. Run database migrations.

  5. Restart the Studio and Learning Management System processes so that the updated environment configurations are loaded.

8.8.6. Configure Badges and Badge Images for Your Open edX Instance

  1. Access the Django Administration website for your instance of Open edX. To do this, go to https://<host name of your Open edX instance>/admin. For example, this might be https://YourOrganization.org/admin.

  2. Under Site Administration > Certificates, define a Badge Image Configuration for each course mode on your platform for which you want to issue badges. For example, “honor” and “verified”.

  3. For each badge image configuration, set these parameters.

    • Course Mode
    • Icon – the badge image to use for the specified course mode

    Important

    Default images are supplied for badges. You must replace the default images with your organization’s own badge images before any badges are issued. When the first badge is issued for a given course, badge images are uploaded to Badgr Server. All badges issued in future for this course will use the original badge image, even if you subsequently change badge images in the Django Administration badge image configuration.

  4. Optionally, define a default image for any course modes that do not have an explicitly specified badge image. Select Default in the badge image configuration.

    Note

    You can specify only one default badge image.

  5. Save each configuration parameter and exit the Django Administration website.

8.8.7. Enable Badges Within Each Course

Badge issuing is enabled by default for all courses, but can be turned off or on again using an advanced setting in Studio. For details, see Enable Badges In Each Course in Building and Running an Open edX Course.