M19 - Custom Certificate

Keywords: certificate, certify, certification, record of achievement.

What is it?

 Use Moodle Certificate to create customised PDF certificates for your students

Why use it?

 Certificates can be used as a record of achieving or to recognise an obtaining a certain level with the course, or even completing a training course. They should not replace any official or credit-bearing certification at UCL.

Who can use it?

Tutor and Course Administrator can set up and issue Certificates.

Before I start...

- None at this time.

Meeting the baseline

The UCL E-Learning Baseline suggests the following for Orientation:

• 2.2 Explain participation requirements:
  • Identify which activities are compulsory and optional.
  • Provide an indicator of effort (such as timings or page counts) for all compulsory tasks.
  • Explain how students are expected to use UCL and external e-learning tools. This PowerPoint Induction template provides a starting point. Wholly online courses might provide this information as a screencast video, with a voice over.
  • Link to instructions for any e-learning tools that students are expected to use.

The Assessment category suggests that you should:

• 4.1 Provide an assessment outline with a clear description of the module assessment, including schedule, criteria and submission details. To avoid duplication this might include a link to a module webpage.

How do I set one up?

1.  Click the Turn editing on button in the top-right of your page.
2. In the topic where you want the certificate to appear, click on the Add an activity or resource drop down link and select Certificate.
3. Provide a meaningful Certificate Name, as this is what students will click on to view it.
4. The Introduction will be displayed to users when they click on the certificate link. This should clearly describe the requirements that will make the certificate available to students. e.g. You need to achieve at least 50% on all quizzes to receive a certificate.
5. Select the Issue Options you want. We do recommend saving Certificates to Moodle for viewing by the teacher. 
6. The next section lets you choose how to set up the core elements of the certificate itself, such as whether to include the print date, grade format, credit hours, teacher name(s)* *and custom text.
   1. Some limited HTML tags can be used in the custom text field, such as *<br>, *<p>, <b>, <i> and <u> and <img> (src and width and/or height are mandatory for images). Click on the blue question mark icon for this option Moodle Resource Centre > M19 - Certificates > M19 QUEST MRK a.png for a full list of HTML options.
7. There is a UCL_Seal you can use for the Signature Image, or you can choose Line if you want the certificate to be signed manually. UCL has a few Seal or Logo Images, including UCL-logo (see right) which will appear in the bottom right of the certificate.
8. The final section is where you decide on the design of the certificate. The Certificate Type can be A4 or Letter and the Orientation *either *Landscape or Portrait. You can choose a number of Border Images and Border Lines. There is no UCL-specific Watermark Image.
9. There is a Group mode and Grouping option (click on the Show Advanced button if it is not visible) to release the certificate to specific Moodle groups. Information on how to do this is given in M13- Groups and groupings.
10. You can also choose to apply date and grade conditions to your certificate. Information on how to do this is given in M35 - Activity completion and Conditional Release
11. Once you have finished click Save and display. Clicking on Get your certificate to see a preview.
     

Caution

- None at this time.

Examples and case studies

- None at this time.

Questions & Answers

- None at this time.

Further information

Administering your certificate: The student can obtain the certificate by clicking on the certificate link on your course home page. If students have met the conditions (if any) they will be able to access the certificate and a display page will allow them to Review your certificate. If they have not completed the requirements Moodle will display a warning.

To edit the certificate, click on the certificate link and use the Settings > Certificate Administration > Edit settings.
On the summary page, a link on the top right hand corner will display a list of certificates awarded, dates received, grade (if applicable) and the alphanumeric verification code.
The buttons at the bottom of this list can be used to export the list in ODS format (Open Office spreadsheet), Excel or text formats.