Being rewarded is a powerful extrinsic motivator. One of the best rewards is recognition for a job well done. Providing these opportunities for rewarding students throughout your course can keep students motivated and create a map of what they can learn.
The Achievements tool in Blackboard allows instructors and course designers to designate criteria for issuing rewards to students in the form of both digital badges and certificates. Students can see which rewards they have earned and what is required of them to receive additional rewards, providing insight into learning progression toward defined competencies.
Students are able to publish badges to the Mozilla Open Backpack, transporting evidence of their learning outside of Blackboard. Instructors can easily see which students have reached learning milestones. To learn more about Open Badges and Mozilla Open Backpack, watch the video below, and go to http://openbadges.org/about/.
The Achievements tool has four functional areas:
- Achievements description
- Reward
- Notification
- Sharing.
Criteria identified in the achievement description must be met before a reward is earned. Students are notified when a reward is earned and can then share it as they choose with the world.
Please visit this Blackboard help article for how-to instructions and more information about this tool: Achievements