Troubleshooting: Unexpected badge award behaviors in Canvas

When a student checks their progress by accessing the Credentials or Badges menu in a course, Canvas Badges/Credentials automatically awards all the badges they have earned. Occasionally, there's an issue where not all badges that are expected appear awarded when students view this page.

Problem

After completing a Canvas course module, a student observes in the Credentials or Badges tab that they were not awarded the badge associated with the module.

Solution for students

Students should check the module completion status in their Modules course navigation view. If the expected module does not register as complete, a student should be able to see the incomplete criteria or should contact the instructor to ask for further details. If the expected module does register as complete, but no badge appears after refreshing Canvas Badges/Credentials, please contact us mailto:[email protected].

Solution for instructors

Instructors can access the View progress button from the Modules page to verify that module completion rules are defined correctly for a given module. Use that view to navigate between students who should and should not have been awarded a badge to verify that the criteria are being defined correctly.
If Canvas Badges/Credentials has awarded badges to students who should not have earned that badge, it means the module completion rules are incorrectly configured in Canvas. After correcting that problem, you can either revoke badges that were awarded mistakenly or clear out the badge assigned to the module and reassign it. Before doing this, ensure you have fixed the problem with the completion rules so that incorrect badges are not re-awarded the next time Canvas Badges/Credentials checks progress when you view the progress screen.

Solution for instructors
Solution for instructors

Badges awarded to students in modules with incomplete assignments

If all the assignments in a particular module are assigned to a section, then anyone not in that section is automatically marked as having completed the module by Canvas. Often, when a single student gets all or no badges, there's a problem with the section they're assigned to. Students not getting badges when requirements are met

Occasionally, the module completion requirements might not be honored and the module needs to be "reset." To determine if this is the issue, click Modules in the course left-side navigation, then click Student progress from the Modules screen and browse to a student who you know has met module completion criteria. If Canvas does not show the student has completed the requirements, you can resolve the issue with the steps below.

To reset the module requirements:

  1. Select the settings gear for the Canvas module.
  2. Click Edit.
  3. Make no changes.
  4. Select Update module.
  5. Recheck Student progress from the Modules window to ensure that the student now shows the student has completed the module.
  6. Check the Progress tab in Credentials and click the page that shows the student in the table and confirm that the badge has been awarded.