Overview

Badges included in your Ready-Made Template are design assets that can be used to verify skills and award achievements. If integrated with Canvas Badges or Canvas Credentials, badges can be aligned to pathways to track student progress, shared by recipients, and provide admin with reports and data tracking.

Why are they important?

Badges help you create well-designed pages that align with Universal Design for Learning Principles and address the why, what, and how of learning.
- Why: UDL principle 6.1 addresses the need to guide appropriate goal-setting. Well designed badges award learners for achieving their goal, and pathway badges highlight the goals a learner can achieve along their way.
- What: UDL principle 2.5 addresses the importance of illustrating course content through multiple forms of media. Well designed badges provide a visual representation of the learner's achievement through text, color, badge shape, and icons.
- How: UDL principle 9.1 addresses the importance of promoting expectations and beliefs that optimize motivation. Well designed badges encourage intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as a learner progresses through a course's content.
Well designed badges externally communicate the effort the learner has put into their education, and encourages higher levels of engagement throughout their learning journey.

Where are they located?

The badges included in your Ready Made Template can be located by:

In Course Navigation, click Files link.
Choose template-images folder.
Choose badges folder.

Customizing Your Badges

It is recommended that badges be customized for your institution. To customize the badges, you can do the following:

In the Course Navigation of your Ready Made Template click Modules link.
Under the Instructor module, click to open the Template: Image Options and Customization Options link.
Scroll to the Customizable Badges section on the page, and select the link to open the Google Slide Deck Copy.
Click the Make a copy button.
Within Google, you can add/replace images by clicking on the original image and then choosing from the options within the Replace Image drop-down box. You can edit the text on the badge and for some assets, may be able to adjust the colors of the designs.
Rename your new badge by either double-clicking on the image title located at the top left of the Google screen or by selecting File > Rename.
- Please Note: This image title will be a part of the default Alt tag so it is important to name the button to correspond with the intended destination/hyperlink. For example, you would name a "Professional Development" badge "Professional-Development-Badge" versus "Copy of HED-Module-Bold-Badges".
Once completed:
- In the toolbar, click File to display a menu.
- Select Download As.
- Click PNG image (.png).
Finally, you will upload your new badge design through Canvas Badges/Credentials when you create a badge in your course. For assistance in creating a badge to award in a course, please review the following Canvas Guide: How do I create a badge in Canvas Badges?