How to issue digital badges for a course or workshop

Under Open Badges 3.0, the achievement a badge describes must have a name, a description and criteria. Criteria can be a link to a human-readable page, a written narrative, or both. Evidence, an image, alignment to an outside framework and an expiry date are optional (specification, appendix B.1.1 and B.1.2).

So the three things to settle are what you call it, what it says in a sentence, and what a person did to earn it. Decide those before you open any software.

This page makes no statement about credit hours, CEUs or transcripts. A badge records one achievement. How it relates to your academic record is your institution's decision.

This section is our advice, not a rule of the standard. The standard requires criteria to exist. It does not say they must be good.

• Name what the person did. “The recipient attended at least 5 of 6 sessions and submitted the final project” can be checked. “The recipient engaged with the material” cannot.
• Use numbers where you have them. Hours, sessions, a pass mark.
• Say who judged it. Instructor sign-off, a rubric, an exam.
• Skip adjectives. A reader who has never met you should be able to tell whether the criteria were met.

The standard does not require an image. In Incredify you either design one in the browser or upload a square PNG. Keep it simple. The badge is shown small in emails and on profiles, so a short title and one clear shape survive better than a crowded design.

You need an email address for each recipient. A name is optional in Incredify, but it makes the badge page and the email friendlier. Collect only what you need. Your sign-in sheet or registration list probably already has both.

Award the badge to your own address before you send it to anyone else. You will see the email, the public page and the downloads exactly as a participant will. If the criteria read badly or the image is cropped, you find out while only you can see it.

In Incredify, a badge can be edited only until someone has been awarded it. After that, you duplicate it and edit the copy. That is one more reason to test on yourself first.

If you leave the email option ticked, Incredify sends each recipient an email with the subject “You've earned: <badge name>” and a link to the badge's public page. No account is needed. On that page they can:

• Verify the badge, which checks its signature.
• Download badge, a PNG with the signed credential encoded inside, or Download JSON-LD, the credential itself.
• Add to LinkedIn. This is a link that opens LinkedIn's own add-to-profile form. The entry LinkedIn adds under Licenses & certifications links to the public badge page. The recipient may need to type some details into the form. Incredify does not control what LinkedIn does with it and does not claim that LinkedIn checks the badge. A separate Share on LinkedIn button shares the page address.

Incredify uses the Open Badges 3.0 data model and signs each badge as a W3C Verifiable Credential (W3C). The issuer's public key is published by Incredify at incredify.net, not on your domain. Incredify is not 1EdTech certified. The registrars guide answers the questions a records office will ask.

On the badge's page, each row in the Issued table has a Revoke button, with an optional reason that is shown to verifiers. Only organization admins can use it. A revoked badge's page stays up with a Revoked banner and verification reports it as not valid. An admin can Restore it.

The dashboard does not set an expiry date on awards today. The standard allows one, but you cannot choose it when you issue in Incredify.

Button and field names below are quoted from the dashboard.

1. Create your free account. Go to the login page, enter your email address and choose Email me a code. Type the 8-digit code and choose Sign in. The same form creates a new account. There is no password.
2. Set up your organization. On Set up your organization, fill in Organization name, Subdomain, Your name, Organization type and Badges per year, then choose Create organization. The subdomain becomes part of your issuer identity and cannot be changed later, so choose it with care.
3. Start a new badge. On the Badges page, choose + New badge. Fill in Badge name, Description and Criteria. Skills is optional.
4. Design the image. On the Design badge tab, choose Open designer. The designer opens on Start from a template: pick a template, pick a shape, or choose Start blank. Edit the text, colors and logo, then choose Done. To use your own artwork instead, choose the Upload PNG tab and upload a square PNG.
5. Create the badge. Choose Create badge. With the designer, the button stays disabled until you have picked a template. Incredify then opens the badge's page. Choose Save draft instead if you want to finish later; drafts cannot be issued.
6. Issue it to yourself first. In Issue this badge, on the Recipients tab, type your own address in Recipient email, add your Name, and choose Issue badge. The box Email the recipient a link to their badge is ticked by default.
7. Open the public page. In the Issued table on the same page, choose View. Check the page, then try Verify and Download badge.
8. Issue the cohort. On the Recipients tab, choose + Add recipient for each person, up to 25 at a time, then Issue badges. For a longer list, use the Bulk (CSV) tab: choose Download template, fill it in, choose Choose CSV file, read the preview, then choose Issue N badges (N is the number of valid rows).

Evidence is optional. In Issue this badge you can add a link, or upload a PDF, PNG or JPEG up to 4 MB, and it is attached to every recipient in that batch. Evidence is embedded in the signed credential and cannot be changed after issuing. The badge form has no alignment field.

The Free plan issues 100 badges a year and needs no credit card. Plans and prices are on the pricing page. Step-by-step help for each screen is in the help center, including Issue your first badge.