Leveraging Anthology Milestone with Blackboard allows badges defined in Milestone to be connected to the Achievements tool in Blackboard Ultra courses and organizations. Criteria for performance in Blackboard will automatically issue Milestone badges when students fulfill badge requirements.

About Milestone and Blackboard

Using Milestone with Blackboard adds a button Use Open Badge to the Achievements tab.

Achievements page opened in an instructor's course

A privileged user who can manage Achievements and has the Allow use of Open Badges privilege can use this option. The user must have a valid email address to launch the button. The user launching the button will see the Milestone badge picker interface. 

Milestone badge picker page within an instructor course. A list of badges is displayed.

When a Milestone badge is selected, the information is passed back to Blackboard’s Achievement tool to set performance criteria.

A milestone badge called "21st Century Skill - Demonstrate Self Awareness" is displayed with information about that badge.

Set up

Milestone product support must complete the first steps of configuring the integration. Support will align your Milestone instance to the Blackboard instance associated with the Tenant ID provided in the request (see steps below).  

The integration between Anthology Milestone and Blackboard leverages the LTI standard from 1EdTech. Setting up the integration is similar to configuring other LTI Advantage (LTI 1.3) tools.  

There are not distinct production and test/stage instances of Milestone. It's recommended to only integrate Milestone with your production instance of Blackboard. This is to avoid accidental issuance of authentic Open Badges from a testing environment.

In a request to Product Support for Milestone, provide the following:

  • State the request to integrate Milestone with Blackboard.
  • Provide the tenant ID of the production Blackboard instance.
    • Access the Administrator Panel.
    • Select Building Blocks in the Integrations module.  
    • Select Installed Building Blocks.
    • In the context menu for Foundations Connector, select Settings.  
  • Tenant ID is second on the list.

After that, the configuration steps for the LTI tool follow a standard configuration path. Blackboard Product Support can assist with this process if questions arise.

1. On the Administrator Panel, under Integrations, select LTI Tool Providers.  

2. Select Register LTI 1.3/Advantage Tool.  

3. Enter the Client ID (Application ID): 993349c0-b9d7-451f-8ab4-bf18fdb50e7c  

4. Select Submit. The application's configuration settings from the Developer Portal will be shown on the page.  

5. Ensure the tool is set as Approved.  

6. In Institution Policies, select that Role in Course, Name, and Email Address will be sent by checking all three boxes.  

7. Set the Membership Service setting to No.  

8. Select Submit to add the LTI 1.3/Advantage tool.  

9. For the Milestone tool provider, select Manage Placements.  

10. Select Create Placement.  

11. Set label to an appropriate name such as Milestone. This name doesn’t currently display in the user interface, but it may in the future.  

12. Set handle to a unique value such as anthology_milestone. This is a value that can be tracked in the database.  

13. Set Availability to Yes.  

14. Set type to OpenBadge provider.  

15. Leave the Launch in New Window setting as the default – not enabled.  

16. Set the Target Link URI to: https://lti.achievementstudio.com/deepLinkOptions  

17. Optionally, set the following as Custom Parameters. These values will appear on the Open Badge selector interface for users. They are used to provide important local support information at the institution:  

institutionInfoUrl=  

institutionInfoDisplay=  

institutionContactEmail=  

  • For the URL, indicate a website where the institution shares more information about their Open Badges or their micro-credential initiatives.  
  • For the information display, enter the text string that will appear to users for the link provided in the URL.  
  • The contact email should be the email or distro the institution uses for any questions related to the institution’s badges or micro-credential initiatives.  

If these values aren’t provided, the interface won’t display additional support information.  

An example, provided for formatting purposes only:  

institutionInfoUrl=https://www.knowledgestate.edu/badges

institutionInfoDisplay=Knowledge State University Badging  

[email protected] 

18. Select Submit to create the placement. 

Behaviors worth noting

  • Users without an email address won’t be able to use the Open Badge picker. Students must have an email address in their Blackboard profile to receive Open Badges they earn.  
  • A privileged user who can manage Achievements and has the Allow use of Open Badges privilege can link to Open Badges.
  • All achievements, including Open Badges, are not retroactive. That is, students can’t earn an achievement for grades they received prior to the creation of the achievement. Only grading activity that happens after the achievement is published will be considered.  
  • An earned achievement isn’t revoked if an instructor changes a student’s grades.  
  • Once an achievement is published, it can’t be changed. If there is a configuration error, delete the achievement and create it again.  
  • Issuing organizations and badges visible in the badge picker interface are created and managed in Milestone.
  • Deleting an achievement that’s linked to an Open Badge doesn’t delete that badge in Milestone.  
  • Instructors using the Student Preview feature won’t see the Achievements tab, can’t earn achievements, and won’t be issued Open Badges from Milestone.
  • Achievements from Original course view do not convert when copying or importing a course.  
  • Achievements can’t be copied from one Ultra course to another.