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And by that, I mean Achievements. Achievements were one of the features that had been airlocked between Original and Ultra. Well, no longer. They’re back and you can see them in your top-level menu. And they’re also kinda different from what they were in Original.
I don’t know how many of you used Achievements in the past. I did, but they weren’t a fundamental part of my courses, so when they were gone from Ultra, it wasn’t the end of the world for me.
So now, they’re back, but they’re a bit different. Let’s see how they work.
Achievements are easy to find on your top menu:
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You’d click on that, obviously. That will take you to the main Achievements page:
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Say, I want to create a badge to reward the students who score over 80% on a set of tests. Once I click on the “+ New Course Badge” button, I get to this page:
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Once I enter my own parameters, this will look like this.
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Note that I only used 2 criteria for the badge but you can add more by clicking in the + Add performance criteria. Also note that if you want to use the percentage range, as I did, you must select Custom Range as Requirement. Custom range allows you to set either a point schema, or a percentage schema, as I have here.
Once you’re happy with your settings, click Publish. Beware: once you publish a badge, it can no longer be edited. However, it can be deleted.
Back to the main Achievements page, you now have your shiny new badge.
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The Blackboard documentation on Achievements is here. If you want to use Achievements, there is a boatload of notes at the bottom of the page. I highly recommend you read said boatload.
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