Adding a Certificate to a Course

Introduction

Using the Certificate module is one way to provide your learners with evidence of course completion. This module creates customized PDF certificates which the student may save or print.

The objective of this article is to provide the information necessary to successfully add a Certificate to a course. Using this information, you will be able to provide your students with a fully customized certificate, and award it based on criteria that you set.

Note: If using Moodle, you must have the Certificate plugin installed on your site to use this module, as it is not standard.

Sections/Summary of the Steps

Before getting into the details of adding a certificate to a course, please note the following sections/steps.

• Section 1: Adding the Certificate module to the course
• Section 2: Configuring the settings

This article will also expand upon the following.

• Tip: Adding custom images

Section 1: Name of the section

The certificate has to be added to the course on a course by course basis:

Enter course > turn editing on

scroll to the week or topic you want to add the certificate> Click "Add an activity or resource"

From the "Add an activity or resource" menu that loads, choose Certificate > Click "Add"

Section 2: Configuring the settings

Note: there are currently some bugs in the certificate module that sometimes cause issues when students go to view a certificate. Sometimes a certificate requires a couple of tries to open before it is successful so it is recommended to provide instructions like ”If the certificate does not open the first time please try again.”

• General: Fill in the Certificate name and introduction. Note: the introduction will be seen on the page just before the student clicks to view his/her certificate. This is a good place for instructions and possibly a congratulations message.
• Issue options: This area allows you to select how the certificate will be delivered and stored, and if email notification will be sent to teachers or other people. If the field Email Teachers is set to yes, there must be enrolled teachers in the course for this feature to work.
  Recommended: set Delivery to “Force Download”, Save Certificates to yes and Reissue Certificates set to no.
• Text options: This area allows for control over what strings of text will appear on the certificate - determine date, security code, grade outcomes, credit hours, teachers names, custom text.
• Design Options: Allows for control over the layout and design of the certificate.
  Select Type, then determine orientation, and select images for border, lines, watermark, signature, seal or say no to any or all of them.
• Common Module settings: Allows for control over how the module will handle groups and the visibility of the activity/resource.
• Restrict access: Allows for control over when a student can view the certificate.
  Grade condition This setting determines any grade conditions which must be met in order to access the activity. Multiple grade conditions may be set if desired. If so, the activity will only allow access when ALL grade conditions are met. NOTE: this feature only works right now for the certificate with the course total or a single exam.
  Activity completion This setting determines any activity completion conditions which must be met in order to access the activity. Note that completion tracking must first be set before an activity completion condition can be set. Multiple activity completion conditions may be set if desired. If so, access to the activity will only be permitted when ALL activity completion conditions are met. This feature has to be enabled at the site level and set on every activity you require to be completed before the student can access the certificate.
• Activity Completion: Allows for control over when the certificate will be considered “Complete” either by allowing students to mark it as complete or have completion based on the student viewing/downloading the certificate.
• Click save when done.

Tip: Adding custom images

The certificate module does allow for custom images (logo's, backgrounds, seals, signatures, borders) to be uploaded via the interface.

Navigate to:

login > Administration block > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Certificate > click Upload > select the image type (border, watermark, signature, seal) > add image by clicking the "Choose a file" button > click save changes

When uploading an image keep the following dimensions in mind.

• For the seal/logo 80x80 pixels is the size recommendation
• Signature 150x31pixels 
• Watermark 386x468 pixels 
• Boarder - 1024x831 pixels