Canvas Badges / Credentials — Can the term 'Badges' be renamed?

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alexander_mitch
Community Participant

I'm the LMS Admin at a small college that has a few certificate programs, and we're interested in possibly replacing our current digital credentialing solution with Canvas Badges (or possibly Canvas Credentials). One of the main sticking points is the term 'badge', which seems more appropriate for smaller or less formal credentials, but not really appropriate for a full multi-course certificate.

Do any of the Canvas/Badgr credentialing options allow someone to change the term 'badge' to something else as it appears in emails, etc? Right now, the only option I can imagine is including the word Certificate in the title, thus getting the somewhat underwhelming '___ Certificate Badge'.

Our current credentialing service allows us to call our credentials 'certificates'.

How are other institutions handling this?

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ProfessorBeyrer
Community Coach
Community Coach

I'm not aware of options for changing the terms within Canvas Badges/Credentials, especially if Instructure is committed to using the Open Badges standard. They discuss this in the document What are Open Badges? in the Canvas Badges Guide. This distinction between badges, credentials, and certificates is something that's unresolved, especially as these terms mean different things in different contexts.

For example, I work with an organization that uses Canvas Badges/Credentials to document the completion of a certificate in online teaching and design. The organization focuses primarily on California's community colleges, and the wording can be confusing. "Badges" is something that our various colleges don't understand, as few of the HR departments/department chairs/area deans are comfortable accepting a digital token as documentation (that's an ongoing challenge for the Open Badges movement). We have another challenge with "credential," because that's what K12 teachers are required to have and we used to have credentials for community college faculty. We settled on "certificate," which presents a smaller challenge because all our colleges award certificates (in addition to degrees). Since Canvas Badges can be printed as certificates, that makes it easier for our participants to provide evidence they have completed the training. 

I look forward to a time when these verifiable badges will be broadly accepted and understood. In the meantime, @alexander_mitch, your option to include the word "certificate" as part of the title is the best one.

I’m going to mark my response as a solution, but there can be more than one. I hope our colleagues here in the Community can share other options for communicating the meaning of a Canvas Badge/Credential. 

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