What are digital badges and how do they work?

Many learners feel more engaged when their progress is recognised in a clear and visible way. Recent research shows that about a third of learners feel more motivated to finish an online course when they can earn digital badges, which highlights how effective they can be for recognising achievement.

This article explains what digital badges are, how they work within a learning environment, and how they appear within Totara Learn.

What are Badges?

Badges are verifiable, digital awards issued to individuals for learning or displaying skills or knowledge, or successfully undertaking a specific task or activity. Badges can also be issued for belonging to a certain group or sharing a common interest.

Badges are free to use and can be issued, earned and displayed within learning management systems.

How do they work?

Learners are motivated in different ways and for different reasons. Many people find encouragement from recognition of their achievements.

Badges are a simple and visually appealing way to recognise these achievements, as well as for learners to share and compare their development of skills and knowledge with their peers.

Training is most effective when individuals are motivated to learn, share, interact and collaborate. Badges can be issued to learners for actively participating within a course and displaying certain soft skills, which encourages these behaviours.

Badges can also advertise knowledge, skills and qualifications for new roles within an organisation or to prospective employers and can add a level of gamification to your learning environments.

How can I create a badge?

Anyone can create a badge, although there are some minor constraints in format and size of the image. Images need to be square – although different shapes can be used within a transparent square – and the file need to be in .jpg, .png or.svg format.

Badges can include text, different shapes, colours and logos and be created using any design tool. For non-designers there are free badge creation tools such as this one.

Once you have created an image, you can define the criteria for awarding that badge and add the other relevant metadata to the badge via an issuing system.

How do I issue badges?

Your options depend on the system you are using to issue badges. Within Totara, you can issue badges at the course level and the site level. There are a range of criteria at both of these levels.

At the course level:

• Manual issue by permitted users
• By completing the course (optionally with a passing grade or by a certain date)
• By completing a specific activity

At the site level:

• Manual issue by permitted users
• By completing a certain set of courses
• By entering information into a particular profile field
• Based on audience membership
• By completing a specific program

After adding a badge the system will automatically issue the badge to anyone who meets the specified criteria or allow anyone with permission to issue the badge manually.

There is no limit to the number of badges you can add to your Totara site and you can assign permission to create new badges to certain people or let course trainers or facilitators add their own.

When a learner meets the criteria for earning a badge they are sent a personalised message with instructions on how they can view and manage their newly awarded badge.

How are badges displayed?

Within Totara Learn, badges may be viewed within a user’s profile page and a list of all badges recently issued within a course can be seen under the Latest Badges block. A user’s Dashboard might also show their recently earned badges.

What’s next?

Badges offer a straightforward way to recognise learning achievements and encourage participation across your organisation. When designed with clear criteria and aligned to meaningful outcomes, they can support motivation and make progress visible to learners.

To learn more about implementing badges effectively within your organisation, read our follow-up article Getting started with badges. It covers practical approaches to badge design, common pitfalls to avoid, and how to use badges strategically within your Totara Learn site.