Certificates of Completion

This article goes over how to create and manage certificates of completion for your courses.

Overview

For schools on our Pro plan and up. A certificate can be added to any course in your school as a way to denote completion of all lessons. These can also offer additional documentation for schools with accreditation.

Create a certificate

To create a certificate:

1. Choose a specific course from your listed products.
2. Click the the Certificates submenu from the course sidebar
3. Click the Create New Certificate button. Otherwise, click the New Certificate button in the top corner to create additional certificates.
4. Choose between three certificate templates, or create your own custom certificate using Liquid/HTML.

Certificate templates

There are three (3) default certificate templates you can choose from when creating a certificate of completion. Once you choose a template, you'll be taken to the certificate editor. 

You can edit elements of the certificate in the lefthand sidebar including:

Content Tab

• Logo
• Title
• Subtitle
• Graduating From (uses course name by default)
• Date Label (date is automatically generated from the day issued)
• Signature
• Serial Number Title

Design Tab

• Background Color
• Primary Text Color
• Secondary Text Color

Settings (gear icon)

• Certificate Name (file name of the certificate)

After updating your template, use the Preview button to see how the certificate will appear to your students.

Click Finish to save any changes. A popup will appear asking if you would also like to Activate your certificate. You can choose to make the certificate available immediately, or wait to activate the certificate for a later time.

Once a certificate is activated, all students who complete the course after activation will see their certificate and have the option to download.

Custom certificates

If you choose to create your own custom certificate, you can use Liquid and/or HTML to build the certificate.

Any change you make will be shown in the certificate preview. Alternatively, click the Preview button to see how your certificate will appear in the lecture editor:

Click Finish to create the certificate.

The following HTML tags can be used in custom certificates:

<a>, <b>, <br>, <code>, <div>, <em>, <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6>, <hr>, 
<i>, <iframe>, <img>, <li>, <ol>, <p>, <pre>, <samp>, <span>, <strong>, <style>, 
<table>, <td>, <th>, <tr>, <u>, <ul>

The following HTML attributes can be used in custom certificates:

allow, allowfullscreen, alt, class, data, frameborder, height, href, id, name, 
src, style, target, type, value, width

The following Liquid variables are available for custom certificates:

• course.name
• current_school.name
• block.student_name (current_user.name can also be used but be aware that when using Download Certificate in the admin, the admin's name will be used as the current user)
• course.report_card.certificate_issued_at | date: "%d - %m - %y" 
• course.report_card.certificate_serial_number

Manage your certificates

While you can create multiple certificate in a course, you can only have one active certificate at a time.

For an active certificate, you can preview the student's view of the certificate by clicking the Preview button. To Edit, Deactivate, or Delete an active certificate, click the More Options (three dot) icon. Note that in order to delete an active certificate, it must be deactivated first.

For an inactive certificate, you can activate an inactive certificate at any time by clicking Activate. To edit an inactive certificate, click the Edit icon. To Preview or Delete an inactive certificate, click the More Options (three dot) icon. 

Certificates that have already been issued to students cannot be deleted until the certificates are revoked from those students. 

Manually issue certificates

In some cases, you may not want students to automatically receive a certificate upon completing your course. Instead, you may want to manually issue certificates of completion to your students. A certificate can still be manually issued if it is deactivated. 

To manually issue an individual certificate:

1. Check that all course certificates are deactivated for the specific course.
2. Navigate to Users > your student's profile > Enrollments to view all active enrollments for that student.
3. Click the More options (three dot) icon under Actions and choose Issue Certificate.
4. A popup modal will appear. Use the dropdown menu to choose the certificate you'd like to issue.
5. After you’ve chosen the appropriate certificate, click Issue.
   
   
   

You can also bulk issue certificates for all students in a specific course using filters.

To manually issue certificates in bulk:

1. Click on the checkbox at the top of the filtered students view to choose a Bulk Action. 
2. Click the Bulk Action dropdown menu and select Issue Certificate. 
3. A popup modal will appear. Use the dropdown menu to choose the certificate you'd like to issue.
4. After you’ve chosen the appropriate certificate, click Issue.
   
   

Students who have been manually issued a certificate of completion will receive an email notification that contains a link to the Certificate tab of the course curriculum, where students can view and download the certificate.

Download certificates

School owners and course authors can download copies of issued certificates from the Enrollments tab of a student's profile at any time.

To download a copy of a student certificate:

1. Navigate to Users > your student's profile > Enrollments to view all active enrollments for that student. Confirm that a certificate has already been issued to the student.
2. Click the More options button under Actions next to the specific course.
3. Select Download Certificate. This may take a few moments to complete and will be available as a PDF file on your device.
   
   

For information on how students can download their own certificates, see the Student experience section below.

Revoke certificates

Once a student has been issued a certificate, the certificate will be listed in the Enrollments tab of their user profile.

To revoke the certificate from a particular student:

1. Navigate to Users > your student's profile > Enrollments to view all active enrollments for that student.
2. In the Certificates area, click the Revoke button next to the specific certificate.
3. A popup modal will appear. Click OK to confirm.
   
   

Once a certificate is revoked, it will no longer be available for download for the student. However, please be aware that if the student has already downloaded the certificate to their device, they will still have access to the PDF copy in their local files.

Student experience

Students will unlock the course certificate once they have marked all lectures as complete. The certificate will appear on the screen once the student has completed the final course lecture. Students can click the Download button underneath the certificate to save the certificate as a PDF file to their device.

If your student has opted-in to receive email from your school, they will also receive an email notification with a link to view the certificate in the Certificate tab of the course curriculum. Students can download a copy of their certificate at any time after it has been issued. 

If a student is unenrolled from the course, or the certificate has been revoked, they will no longer be able to view the certificate.