Some Initial Background
In our K-12 district, we currently utilize Canvas Credentials to manage professional development (PD) for staff. Through this system, educators earn badges for completing specific sessions, and these sessions often serve as steps within larger learning pathways. Along with the badges, participants are awarded contact hours, and in some cases, they have the chance to win swag as part of a drawing for those who earn certain badges. For the most part, this process is straightforward and runs smoothly.
However, this past summer, we faced a unique challenge with our optional PD sessions. Over the course of nine weeks, we hosted twenty-seven distinct sessions, which fell into three main categories. We struggled with how to structure the badging system for these sessions without creating an unwieldy module within each individual PD course for every school building. The real breakthrough came when we discovered it was possible to award multiple badges through a single assignment, which significantly streamlined the process and made it much more manageable.
A Few More Details
Our Summer PD was entirely optional and took place over the course of nine Wednesdays throughout the summer. We structured the sessions into three categories, each designed to meet different professional development needs:
- Collaboration / Work Sessions: These sessions provided teachers with dedicated time to collaborate with colleagues or work independently. The focus was on planning, developing lessons and activities, building assessments, or working on any instructional tasks that needed attention. Teachers could choose what to work on, either with a team or on their own.
- Spotlight Learning Sessions: Teachers could consult a weekly schedule to see which specific topic would be covered each Wednesday. These sessions ranged from exploring digital tools to discussing a book study, onboarding new staff, and even a presentation on artificial intelligence. Each week, the topics varied to offer diverse learning opportunities for participants.
- Application of Learning Reflections: After attending a Spotlight Learning session or another personalized PD opportunity, teachers had the option to submit a reflection. This reflection asked them to consider how the learning could be applied in their classrooms during the upcoming school year, focusing on instruction, classroom management, or other relevant areas.
Teachers had the option to attend or complete all three types of sessions each week. If a teacher participated in every session over the nine weeks, they would have engaged in a total of twenty-seven unique sessions. This presented a challenge when it came to setting up a badging system that could accurately track all of these different activities.
Overcoming Our Badging Challenge
At first, our plan was to award badges for each session category. We envisioned creating twenty-seven separate assignments, each corresponding to a specific session throughout the summer. Each assignment would be graded in some way to trigger the awarding of a badge. However, we quickly realized the challenges that this approach would bring:
- The sheer number of assignments would make the PD module much larger and more cumbersome than we wanted.
- Given that we couldn't predict which specific sessions or weeks each teacher would attend, we'd need to create badges for every single assignment, regardless of whether it was attended.
- Creating unique badges for every session and every week would result in an overwhelming number of badges—way more than was feasible to manage or meaningful for the participants.
After several brainstorming sessions and iterations of possible solutions, we finally found an elegant way to solve our badging dilemma. We simplified the process by using just one assignment and a single rubric, while still awarding three distinct badges for different participation levels. This streamlined approach made it much easier for both teachers and facilitators to manage, while still capturing the key components of the PD experience.
The Canvas Assignment
The assignment itself was straightforward and simple to set up. It was worth 27 points in total, with the submission type set to Online and File Uploads, so participants could submit their reflections digitally. Each week, the session facilitators would adjust the points for the corresponding session, using a rubric that was attached to the assignment to track the teachers' participation and reflections.
The Rubric
The rubric was designed with three key criteria, each corresponding to one of the three categories of PD sessions: Collaboration/Work Sessions, Spotlight Learning Sessions, and Application of Learning Reflections. The ratings for each category totaled nine points at one point intervals. Participants would receive one point for each session attended or reflection completed. Rubrics would be updated each week by facilitators. To minimize confusion and discrepancies, the plan was to have only one or two facilitators adjust the scores on the rubrics in each course every week.
Three Badges
After careful consideration, we decided that awarding badges for each session category wasn’t necessary. Instead, we created three distinct badges, which would be awarded based on accumulated points for attending any combination of sessions throughout the summer. This approach simplified the system and allowed for more flexibility.
Here’s how it worked:
- If a teacher attended a work session for five different weeks, they would earn 5 points.
- If a teacher attended two work sessions, two spotlight sessions, and submitted one Application of Learning Reflection, they would earn 5 points.
- If one teacher attended a work session during Week 1 and a different teacher attended a work session during Week 9, each teacher would receive 1 point for their respective week.
To add an element of gamification to the PD experience, we introduced the Summer Scholar Badges. Teachers could “level up” by earning more points, with the following point structure:
- Level 1 Summer Scholar Badge = 3 points
- Level 2 Summer Scholar Badge = 6 points
- Level 3 Summer Scholar Badge = 9 points
This system made it easy for teachers to earn their first badge, and the Level 3 badge was still achievable without needing to attend all 27 sessions—perfect for a summer PD program where attendance might vary. It allowed for a sense of accomplishment, even if teachers couldn't attend every session, while also keeping the process motivating and attainable.
Setting Up the Badges with the Credentials Integration in the Canvas Courses
In reality, there was truly nothing exceptional about adding the badges to the course and having them award multiple badges for a single assignment through the Canvas Credentials integration. Prior to realizing this possibility, we had always added one badge to one assignment. Then we would add another badge to another assignment. Through some experimentation, we discovered that we could add multiple badges to the same assignment by using different point threshold amounts for each badge.
We started by adding the Summer Scholar 2024 Level 1 badge to the assignment titled Summer Scholar 2024 Badges. the trigger type was set to Points score and the Points threshold was set to 3 of 27 points.
The level 2 and 3 badges were added to the same assignment with the exact same settings except for the Points threshold. The level 2 badge was set to 6 points and the level 3 badge was set to 9 points.
In Conclusion
While this post may go above and beyond the necessary details explaining how Canvas Credentials can award multiple badges for a single assignment, it’s important to recognize that a successful badging program requires careful planning and thoughtful design well before implementation. If we had gone with our initial approach for the summer badging system and created separate badges for each session category every week, the process would have been much more cumbersome and potentially confusing for both participants and facilitators. This experience underscored the value of strategic planning involved for this program. By taking the time to consider the bigger picture, we were able to create a simpler, more effective system that streamlined the experience and made it easier for everyone involved.
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