Managing Your Badges
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      3. Managing Your Badges

      Can I backdate issuing for activities that happened in the past?

      Find out about retrospective issuing and ways to issue badges for activities in the past.

      We refer to backdated issuing, or issuing a badge for an activity that happened in the past, as ‘retrospective issuing’.

      When issuing individually via email or in bulk, platforms such as Credly, Navigatr, and Open Badge Factory (OBF) enable you to enter a date of issuance which could be a date in the past, present or future to suit your needs.

      Although this can be a really handy feature for short periods of time (e.g. you delivered activity over the weekend and don’t have a chance to issue until the following week), we recommend caution when using retrospective issuing as a practice for longer time periods between activity and issuing.

      If you have a specific need to carry out retrospective issuing, it is important to consider the following factors and their potential solutions:

      Consent

      If the legal basis you rely on for data processing is consent, and digital badging was not part of the activity when it occurred, it is unlikely that the earner has had the opportunity to give their consent for you to process their personal data and issue them with a badge.

      Please see this guide for more information on GDPR and consent for issuing digital badges.

      Solutions
      Get in touch with earners to gather their written consent before you consider issuing to them for activities in the past. Explain that they have an opportunity to be issued with a badge for engaging with the activity and ask for them to provide their written consent for you to process their personal data.

      How you gather this consent is down to what works best for you and your organisation's systems and data storage / privacy / processing policies, but some examples we have seen in the past include online consent forms such as this.

      If your issuing platform is Navigatr – you may consider creating an Activity for the badge and sharing the URL with earners for them to create a Navigatr account and click ‘Attending’ to request to be issued with the badge. You can then review the attendee list and issue to each earner with a single click.

      If your issuing platform is OBF – you may consider creating a Badge Application to enable earners to complete a form and request to be issued with the badge. You can then review the applications and issue to each earner with two clicks.

       

      Acceptance

      Issuing for activities that happened in the past tend to have low acceptance rates and engagement. This can often be down to a range of reasons such as they:

      • Are no longer in regular contact with your organisation.
      • Are not sure or can’t remember what the badge is for.
      • Are unaware of how to accept and use their badge.
      • Don’t see the benefit of accepting a badge for past activities.
      • Are uncomfortable clicking the link in an issuing notification email that they weren’t expecting.

      Solutions
      The best acceptance rates happen where earners are aware that they will soon be receiving a badge, understand what it is for, and how they can use it.

      Engaging with earners is an important step in the process, and alongside gathering the appropriate consent, can help improve your acceptance rates for retrospective issuing. Please see “step 7. Support Your Earners” of the Complete Guide to Writing and Issuing Digital Badges for more information.

      If your issuing platform is Navigatr – you may consider creating an Activity for the badge and sharing the URL with earners for them to create a Navigatr account and click ‘Attending’. You can then review the attendee list and issue to each earner with a single click. Using this method, as the earner has specifically requested to be issued with the badge, is an easy way to ensure a good acceptance rate.

      If your issuing platform is OBF – you may consider creating a Badge Application to enable earners to complete a form and request to be issued with the badge. You can then review the applications and issue to each earner with two clicks. Using this method, as the earner has specifically requested to be issued with the badge, is an easy way to ensure a good acceptance rate.


      Other factors to consider:

      Relevance

      Does your new badge still apply to previous participants? Issuing a badge is your organisation verifying that an earner has achieved all of the earning criteria listed on the badge. If the activity has changed in the time since an individual completed the activity and your badge was created, it may no longer be relevant to them and therefore issuing to them could be inappropriate.

       

      Use to Earner

      It is important to consider what the earner stands to gain from being issued with a badge for an activity that happened some time ago. We do not recommend large scale retrospective issuing for light-touch badges (e.g. an ‘Engage’ layer badge for attending a webinar) as we tend to find this kind of issuing receives poor engagement, however, retrospectively issuing a badge for more intensive activities (e.g. completing a work experience placement / internship) could be very valuable to the earner.

      If you have any questions about retrospective issuing or would like to find out more about the options on your issuing platform, don’t hesitate to get in touch by completing a customer support request.