Achievements and Badges
Instructors can create Achievements to define key learning objectives based on specific graded items in their Blackboard courses, and use Badges to communicate objectives to students and help them track their progress.
Achievements and Badges are two names for the same feature in Blackboard. Strictly speaking, “achievement” refers to the underlying performance criteria defined by the instructor, and “badge” refers to the visible icon + description that is displayed for students, but in practice the terms can be used interchangeably.
Creating Achievements
Each Blackboard achievement must be based on one or more items in your course gradebook. Before you can create an achievement, you must set up all of the associated graded items first. For example, if you wanted to create an achievement for scoring at least 80% on all the quizzes in unit 1 of your course, you must first create all of the unit 1 quizzes. For information about creating and managing graded items in Blackboard, see our FAQ guide for Blackboard Assignments & Tests (BAT-FAQ).
To create a new achievement, go to the Achievements tab in the top navigation of bar of your course and then click the “+ Add Course Badge” button in the upper right.
When the new badge panel opens, follow these steps to create your achievement/badge:
Enter a title in the upper left. This is the title of the badge as it will be displayed to students.
Enter a brief explanation of the purpose/nature of the badge in the description field. This should tell students what the badge represents and what requirements they must meet to earn it.
Select a badge image. You can choose from a set of premade icons provided by Blackboard, or click the ‘upload file’ button to add your own image or a stock photo.
Set the performance criteria for earning the badge. This is nearly identical to the process for creating performance-based release conditions.
First select a gradable item from your course gradebook. This can be an individual graded assessment such as a midterm exam, or a calculated column you have already created such as a total homework average.
Next set the performance requirement for the selected gradable item. Choose either ‘percentage’ or ‘points,’ and then set the minimum threshold needed to earn the badge.
Optionally, a badge can be based on more than one gradable item. Click “+ Add performance criteria” at the bottom to add another gradable item to the achievement/badge criteria. Students must meet all criteria to earn a badge.
When you have completed all of the steps above, click either “Save Draft” or “Publish” in the bottom right.
A published badge immediately becomes visible to all active users in your course. Any student who has already met the criteria will receive the badge automatically.
Published badges cannot be edited; the only way to make changes to a published badge is to delete and rebuild it.
Awarding Badges
Badges are awarded automatically as soon as a student meets all of the performance criteria specified by the instructor. All associated gradebook items must have a posted grade before the badge is awarded. For calculated columns, this includes all items connected to the gradebook calculation. For example, a badge that recognizes students who achieve at least an 80% quiz average, based on a calculated average column for all quiz grades, will not award until a student has received a grade for each quiz - if one or more quiz grades remain blank or unposted, the badge will not be awarded.
Students who have already been awarded a badge will keep it even if they no longer meet the criteria at some point in the future. In the example above, if a student has already earned the badge for over 80% quiz average, but then their grade on quiz #5 is curved down and they drop below an 80% average, they will still keep the badge. As noted above, the only way to correct an achievement/badge to reflect changes to the underlying gradebook data is to delete and rebuild the badge.
Students will see a notification flag next to the achievements tab in their course navigation bar whenever they are awarded a new badge. They can open the achievements tab to see all the badges they have earned in the course. Badges are displayed in the order earned. Clicking on an earned badge will expand a detailed view with the full description, list of all performance criteria, and timestamp for when the badge was awarded.
Students can also see course badges they have not yet earned, displayed at the bottom of the Achievements tab. The badge icon for unearned badges is grayed out - clicking on the badge will display the description and criteria, and a “Not Earned Yet” notification.
Limitations of Achievements/Badges
All Blackboard badges display the following disclaimer when expanded to view the full details:
“Course badge. This badge recognizes course achievements but isn’t verifiable outside the course.”
At this time, Blackboard achievements/badges are only available for progress tracking within a specific, individual course. Badge templates can be copied from course to course just like other Blackboard content, but like discussions or assignments, only the badge itself is copied, not any student records from the previous course.
Achievements and badges can be a useful way to deliver progress feedback to students in a course, but they are not official grades or certificates of achievement, and have no meaning outside of the course context in which they were awarded. A well-organized course gradebook is an essential prerequisite to using achievements effectively.
As of the start of 2026, Achievements and Badges are a relatively new feature of Blackboard Ultra and are under active development, with new and expanded options and use cases planned for release in the near future. For further technical details and updates about using achievements/badges in Blackboard, visit the Anthology Blackboard support page, or contact OLS to speak to an on-campus instructional technology expert about how to incorporate achievements and badges into your courses.