On-boarding Users
We often have support questions and queries coming into the team at Open Badge Academy, and the majority of the time our Knowledgebase articles and Support Videos are able to support managers and members across the system.
However, on-boarding your badge earners is something that should be done with careful consideration to help ensure you create the smoothest user journey for them (and for you!) Below is a short guide on how each of the processes work, and the advantages they can provide depending on your programme approach.
Route 1 — User Signup
This is the most common route we see individuals taking who are first exploring the Open Badge Academy. This can take several forms, but initially a learner might sign up to the OBA Underground — a home for earners to take an earn badges they wish to explore on their own terms. But, with each Academy created, you (as the Academy Owner/Manager) have the option to allow users to sign up to your academy in this way.
On your main academy page you’ll see a signup option:
This take the learner through to a unique signup form specific to your own academy — you can tell this by looking up the URL, you notice for the OBA Underground, the URL is:
https://www.openbadgeacademy.com/oba/memberjoin
or for Worldchefs it is:
https://www.openbadgeacademy.com/worldchefs/memberjoin
Users who join the Open Badge Academy in this way (no matter what academy they join) will need to verify their Email Address before they are able to log in.
There are a few things to note here:
- You will have to approve each of these sign ups (you receive a notification when you’re logged in)
- You can turn off this approval option — but you’ll leave yourself susceptible to any learner joining your academy
- This signup route can be turned off completely so learners cannot join your Academy in this way (Pro Feature)
Route 2 — Controlled Account Creation
The second option for account creation, puts the ownership of users in your hands. We often see educational organisations using this particular route to onboard large quantities of users and provide them with pre determined usernames and passwords.
Every Academy has the ability to create individual user accounts, this can be done from the People Management page (from the left-hand menu bar once you’re logged in)
Using the ‘Add Member’ and ‘Add Manager’ tools you can individually create an account. To do this, you’ll need the following information:
- First Name and Last Name *
- Gender
- Username *
- Password *
- Email Address*
- D.O.B
- Country or Origin
The * denotes a mandatory field. You’ll additionally need to select the status of the user (by default this is live, meaning the account can be logged into straight away) but you may way to hold off on that so you have draft options as well. You can also define their communication and mail list preferences as well.
Users who join the Open Badge Academy in this way (no matter what academy they join) will need to verify their Email Address before they are able to log in.
A few points worth mentioning:
- User signup in this way, can only be done on a 1–1 basis, and puts the control of that users data in your hands — we’d recommend you sending each of these users a password reset request to ensure they then create their own personal password. You can do this by directing them here and telling them to enter their account email address.
- You can create user accounts in bulk uploads, using our CSV tool (Pro Feature)
- If you wish to add additional Academy Mangers, you will either need to be on our Academy Network package, or you can purchase additional Manager accounts separately.
Route 3- Sign up via Badge Award
For me, the most time efficient way to onboard your users into the Open Badge Academy, is via a process we call ‘Sign up via Awarding’. This process utilises the earlier mentioned CSV tool but instead of creating accounts we’re going to be awarding badges to users (to step them through a Fast Sign up process)
To do this you need a ‘membership’ style badge, the require no evidence and is simply defining that the user is a member of your academy. If you want you can use our own Welcome to the OBA to do this.
To award to a user, click the award button at the top of the page, and choose ‘Individual’ or ‘Group’ (Pro Package) from the options to enter the recipients details, you’ll only need 3 bits of data for this process:
- First name
- Last Name
- Email address
There are other non mandatory fields, but for the on-boarding processes, the above 3 will suffice.
What this flow does is send the user a Badge Claim email, that steps them through a signup process. They are left in charge of creating their own password, and their username becomes their email address. This leaves you in much better stead in terms of data protection, and starts the user on their badging journey by issuing them their first credential!
Points worth noting:
- This flow works best when using the CSV tool, as it allows you to bulk award to large numbers of users quickly.
- You can keep a track of who has them subsequently claimed their badge (and set up their account) from both the People Management page but also from the Email awards tab on the badge itself.
- You can award badges to existing members of you academy using this route (see the top option in the image above)
Users who join the Open Badge Academy in this way (no matter what academy they join) will automatically have their email verified when they claim their badge (and complete account set up) — Two Birds, One Stone!
