Add optional "Date to Assign Student Badge" for courses
Add an option under course settings for when the "Student Badge" is assigned. Currently it is assigned when someone registers. The issue is that Student Badges are used as prerequisites for trips. This means that as soon as someone registers for the Scramble class, the website will let them sign up for Scrambles. We should wait to assign the student badge until students are far enough through the course to actually go on trips.
I'm open to other suggestions on how to handle this, but delaying issuing the badge seems like a simple to implement method.
Brian Seater
shared this idea
Hello Brian -
Thank you for submitting your idea. This idea was reviewed, but is closing as there is quite a bit of development that would be required for this and even if the solution was built there will still be challenges with students and activities they should qualify for. There is not a great one size fits all solution for students in a given course as their range of past experiences and fitness levels may vary. As Travis mentioned below, there are a few options that can be used today to ensure a student is provided the badge when the course leaders feel that they have met a given 'student' status that I suggest you consider using to meet your need.
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Travis Prescott
commented
Another way to handle this is to remove the "student badge" assignment from the course and place it on an activity. We do this in Foothills Snowshoeing. The main downside is that you have to have things in a rigid sequence such that the student badge is assigned after the last field trip. The other downside is that it prevents students from signing up for trips early without contacting the leader. I see this as the lesser of evils though, since currently students are signing up for trips they absolutely shouldn't be by virtue of their student badges.
I don't know what the best solution is, but I would argue the underlying problem is serious. It adds a lot of administrative burden to trip leaders who have to essentially verify everyone on their roster and, in some cases, throw people off the trip, and worse, if they don't do that, it's a potential safety issue as someone sneaks onto a trip without the necessary skills "because the website let them".
And this isn't hypothetical. I had to toss 4 people off my first 2 snowshoe trips of the year because they had brand new student badges. That prompted me to start making my trips all leader permission required.
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Brian Seater
commented
Eliminating student badges will have to be part of a larger discussion on the badge workflow. We ran into an issue with issuing skill badges in scrambling this year and what to do if someone doesn't finish the course. Fully implementing skill badges also seems to be a longer term project. But yes, skill badges will help a lot with this issue.
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I actually think when we have fully implemented skill badges, we can eliminate student badges.