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Find out more about writing milestone badges.
Milestone badges are a fantastic way to auto-issue digital badges via OBF. Creating a milestone badge enables you to link a pathway of badges together and auto-issue a final badge when an individual earns all or a specific number of badges in the pathway.
Before writing a badge that is intended for use as a milestone badge, you must first consider the conditions you intend to set.
Where individuals must earn all badges in a pathway to be issued with the milestone:
This is the simplest way to use milestone badges.
We recommend that your milestone badge is written as a meta badge. This gives earners a single badge to share online, add to CV, or use in a job application, that charts their journey through earning a series of badges and gives a single record of all of their achievements in one badge. Viewers of the badge online can then click to open the individual badges that have been earned along the way.
For more information on writing a meta badge in the Badge Zone, please see this guide.
Where individuals earn a minimum number of badges in a pathway to be issued with the milestone:
Issuing a badge is a verification that earners have achieved every bullet point in the earning criteria section. For this reason, writing your milestone as a meta badge including all badges in the pathway may not be appropriate.
Deciding to issue a milestone badge for earning a minimum number of badges in a pathway (e.g. if they get the milestone after being issued with three badges out of a pathway of five) opens some ambiguity for the final milestone. Ensure that when writing the milestone badge, you reflect that there is some flexibility in how this milestone badge is earned.
Try to be specific – while you might not write this as a meta badge, you can include reference to other badges. If you are using a milestone badge to reflect repeated activity (e.g. a bronze badge for attending a minimum of three activities out of a choice of five) you could reflect this in your badge description:
“Earners of this badge have successfully achieved this Artsy Arts Bronze Award upon earning three digital badges. They have attended a minimum of three creative arts workshops that could include photography, lino cutting, sculpture, painting, or collage.”
Ensure that the final milestone badge is written in a way that is relevant for all earners achieving the minimum number of badges, regardless of which specific badges they have earned. You could choose to focus the badge on the development of skills and behaviours rather than specific actions or activities. For more information on writing badges for skills and behaviours, please see this guide.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss using milestone badges, don’t hesitate to get in touch. To create a milestone badge with your OBF account, please see this guide.