The Certificate of Completion tool is used for displaying a certificate bearing the name of an individual student or participant of a course. The certificate displays as an image on the screen and can be printed if required. When a student/participant views the certificate, his/her own name and user ID will be displayed on that certificate along with the current date.Example Certificate

The Certificate of Completion tool is best used in conjunction with the Adaptive Release feature so that the certificate will only be displayed to the student/participant when certain criteria are met, for example, the satisfactory completion of a test.

Step by step

How to add a Certificate of Completion to a Course or Organisation site

  1. Access the content area where you would like to add the certificate
  2. Click the Tools button at the top of the page
  3. Choose the Certificate of Completion option from the Tools menu
  4. The Add Certificate page will load, where you will do the following:
    1. Enter the Link Name for your certificate. This is the text that students/participants will click to view the certificate
    2. Upload a Certificate Design. This will be an image file containing the static elements of your certificate design that conforms to a particular template, ready for individual student/participant details to be printed into reserved spaces. More information on preparing this certificate design can be found below under Preparing your Certificate Design.
    3. Determine the Date Display Format for your certificate. This is how the date will be printed on the student/participant's certificate and will either be the full date (date/month/year) or just the year alone.
    4. Determine the Release Options for the certificate. These are the same options you will see when you create other content items such as whether to make the content available, track the number of views and choose the dates when the item should be visible.
  5. Click Submit to save these settings and have the certificate item placed into your site.

Note that the certificate is now available to anyone who can view the site. If you only wish for the certificate to be available to those who have met certain criteria, you will need to apply an Adaptive Release rule to the certificate item. This can be done in the same manner as applying Adaptive Release rules to any other content in your course/organisation site (i.e. clicking the chevron next to the name of the certificate item and choosing Adaptive Release from the context menu). Please see the Adaptive Release page for further details.

Modifying an existing Certificate of Completion

After having created a Certificate of Completion, it will appear in your course/organisation site as a link with the name you specified as the Certificate Link Name. To edit this certificate and change any of the settings you established when creating the certificate, click the chevron icon:

Chevron icon

(next to the certificate link and choose Edit. This will return you to the screen you saw during set-up and allow you to modify the certificate settings).

Preparing your Certificate Design

When you first encounter the Add Certificate page (step 4 above), you will be asked to upload a Certificate Design. This will be an image file that conforms to the following requirements:

  • It must be an image file in PNG , JPG / JPEG or GIF format
  • It must measure 700 pixels in width and 990 pixels in height
  • It must have space reserved for the student/participant name, student/participant user ID and the current date in the locations specified in the template (see below)

Certificate Design Template

A template is available on the Add Certificate page that can be downloaded and modified so that it contains the wording and graphical elements that you require on your certificate.

Screenshot of certificate template link

The certificate template also indicates the locations of reserved regions that must be left blank so that the individual student/participant name, student/participant user ID and date can be printed onto the certificate at the time when the student/participant receives it.

In the same location as the certificate template, there is also an example of a completed certificate design that you may download and use as inspiration for your own certificate design. This will show you what kind of content can be placed where on the certificate and how the reserved regions have been left blank, ready for individual student/participant details to be printed.

Working with the Certificate Template Design

Download the Certificate Template when prompted on the Add Certificate page and open this in an image editing application on your computer.

Important

Please note: Griffith University does not provide technical support or training for image editing software. You should consult the Help menu within the software itself, or search the web for support provided by the software vendor if you need assistance using such software.

Some examples of image editing software can be found on the Digital Basics site. Again, please note that we do not provide training or technical support for such software. If you are not familiar with the use of this software, it is advisable that you consult with your team to find someone who is.

You may also wish to download the example of a completed certificate design to see what kind of text and design elements could be placed in the certificate. This example file is also available from the Add Certificate page.

Ultimately, you will want to transform the template into something that resembles a certificate with the desired text and design elements in place and the reserved spaces left blank, as seen in the example of the completed certificate.

Certificate Template transformed into a Certificate Design

After creating your certificate design, save this file to your computer as a PNG , JPG / JPEG or GIF file, then return to the Add Certificate page in your course/organisation and upload it from your computer at the Certificate Design step.

A note about printing

It is a known issue in Internet Explorer that it is unable to correctly print certificates generated by this tool. Instead, please follow the on-screen instructions that advise you to right-click the certificate image and choose "Save image as" or "Save picture as" to save the certificate image file to your computer. You may then print this saved image.

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