I’m very excited to try out badges in Moodle 2.5. I just upgraded my Moodle this week and this is just one of the new features available. I can set up course badges to be automatically awarded to students based on preset criteria. For instance I can award students a badge for posting X number of times in a discussion or for completing all activities in a section.
I can also set the badges to only be awarded if an assignment is completed on time. I can even log completion tracking for students reading a document or downloading a reading so I could award a badge for doing some extra reading. In addition to the automated badges, I can hand them out manually or even have students self-mark activities complete which could trigger a badge being awarded.
I’m interested in seeing if badges will motivate students and this will tie into my Masters in Educational Practice program I will be starting in two weeks.
If anyone has ideas on how to use badges in the classroom, I’d love to hear them!
Perhaps it is possible to make use of badges as tokens that can be redeemed in the class for particular bonuses.