How to Create Achievements

• Access the achievements tool from the Course Tools section of the Control Panel.
  

 

• Select the type of achievement:
  • Course Completion: The certificate reward is required. An additional badge is optional.
  • Milestone: The reward can only be a badge.
  • Custom: The reward can be a badge, certificate, or both.
• On the Create Achievement page,  type a name.
  

 

• Select a Achievement Location. Choose a place in your course where students are likely to earn the badge or certificate. Students are presented with the content item and a notification of the new item.
• Decide if students can see the existence of the achievement before earning it:
  • Choose Yes for rewards meant to motivate all students.
  • Choose No for special rewards for specific students that all course members do not need to see.
• Optionally, type a description. This description should clearly define what you expect students to complete to earn the associated reward.
• Click Define Triggers to continue.

 

Important: An achievement is not presented to students in the student view of the achievements tool until you define a trigger rule and select a reward

Define Criteria Triggers for Achievements

For an achievement, you can define one or more rules that trigger the release of the reward. You must define at least one rule.

The achievements tool uses the content adaptive release technology of Blackboard Learn, including the following items:

• Attempts on test, surveys, and assignments
• Grades on tests, surveys, and assignments
• Graded discussion posts, graded wikis, graded blogs, and graded journals
• Manually created Grade Center columns
• Marked reviewed statuses on course content
• Group membership or specific users
• Starting date for earning an achievement Setting a Display After date means that students cannot earn the reward before that date, even if they have already met the criteria.

To create a rule, name it and set each criterion necessary for fulfilling the requirements of the achievement. Use the add functions to create additional criteria for grade and review status.

EXAMPLE:  If students must complete four exams in your course and have a final grade of 70%, you will create the following:

1. Attempt on exam A
2. Attempt on exam B
3. Attempt on exam C
4. Attempt on exam D
5. Grade for the running total column of at least 70%

In circumstances where different criteria are possible, click Add Another Rule to create another rule. For example, you have a group of learners who need accommodation and have different performance requirements to receive the reward.

To manually award an achievement, use the membership criteria options to select the recipients. For example, you can award a mayor badge for leading discussions.

Click Select Reward to continue.

Choose the Reward

On the final page, choose the reward.

You can preview how a certificate will appear to students. It includes the issuing institution as specified by the administrator, the user’s name, the course name, and the date the criteria of the achievement were met.

For badges, you can select an image from the catalog or upload a custom image. An uploaded badge image is available for reuse within your course. If you uploaded an image and need to remove it, you can delete the file from Course Files in the achievements directory. Uploaded images are automatically resized.

The issuer name is prepopulated based on the administrator’s settings. You can specify an expiry date for the badge yourself.

Click Save and Exit to issue the achievement.

View Achievements and Recipients

In the achievements tool, you can see all of the achievements defined in your course, as well as a count of recipients for each of the achievements.

Click the Recipients link for details about those students who earned each of the achievements. Click a student’s name for that student’s view of the My Achievements page.

The Date Received lets you know when your students saw the notification of their earning of the achievement. Typically, this is immediately upon earning, but in cases where instructor grading or manual awarding was involved, the date received is when students were shown their achievement rewards.

Student View

Students can access the achievements tool on the Tools page, from a tool link on the course menu, or from a link in a content area.

You can see a student’s My Achievements view by clicking a student’s name in the Recipients pane. The page will appear exactly as it will to that student.