Open Badges
Introduction
What is an Open Badge?
At its most basic level Open Badges are a way to recognise learning. Open Badges is both an idea and a technical framework by which organisations and communities can build recognition systems for learning.
To the learner this means that it is possible to participate in learning environments and gain recognition for that process on a much more granular level than traditional education provides. Badges also exist in recognition that learning happens everywhere - not just in established educational institutions. So with this kind of framework it is possible to participate in a 2 week online course with Peer to Peer University (P2PU), for example, and earn a Badge for that course.
The badge itself is both something you can display on a website and something that others can use to verify your learning accomplishment.
The badge you display is an image file you can use on your website or on other websites such as the profile pages of social networks you belong to. For completing a course or a learning stage you are awarded a badge in the form of an image file.
To verify this learning the technical design of Open Badges means that there is a verification system employers or other interested parties can use to check your badges to ensure they were infact awarded to you.
For organisations that issue badges the badges enable recognition systems that can help build community and value the work done by individuals in an organisation or community. If your organisation or community is valued then it is expected that the value of the badges will also be transmitted which can lead to possible employment and other opportunities for badge earners.
It is early days for Open Badges but the idea has a lot of energy. It is primarily the push from Mozilla which is giving it this momentum but Siyavula and P2PU are some of the high profile early adopters that are pushing Open Badges forward and gaining a lot of support for it.
Finding more information
One of the key issues I found when trying to discover more about the project is that the documentation is dispersed and conflicting.
So, the docs you want are these:
- http://openbadges.org/ - primary place to go for a light introduction into what the project is trying to achieve. Does not give much detail but communicates the essential point.
- https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki and https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/_pages - this wiki seems to be the best place to find technical and some functional documentation. Of particular interest are the documents about the assertion system since earlier documentation on the mozilla site conflicts significantly with the information in the wiki. The information in the github wiki is the latest and most accurate.
- https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges - good list of points to get more information including irc channels, mailing lists etc
There are some pages you should avoid notably https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/infrastructure-tech-docs since it is out of date and misleading.
Key Concepts
Learner
In the Open Badges world someone that earns badges or commits to work towards earning a badge is known as a 'learner'. The learner is the key focus of this endeavour. Open Badges are a way for learners to be recognised for what they have learned. The Open Badges movement seems to be very appreciative of the needs of the learner and are careful to architect the idea to prioritise the learners needs over institutional needs. If you wish to witness this care first hand then consider joining the online discussion1
The Open Badges project anticipates that learners will be able to use their badges to 'Unlock new career and learning opportunities'2 . It is an ambitious assertion and to date largely unproven but the premise makes a lot of sense. If a learner can earn badges from communities and organisations that are recognised by potential employers, and these badges can be verified then it would make sense that employers would take this into account. The badges however are meant to express more than this, they are also intended to convey ongoing learning which is a testament to the learners drive and motivation to keep learning - a valuable asset in any employee.
Since this kind of learning can 'occur anywhere' the badge system is designed to give the learner a central point to manage their accredited badges. This is known as the backpack and there is more on this later.
Learners are expected to display their badges on websites and there has been some development of the technology to support this but it is still embryonic. However, badges are just image files so it is also possible that learners can just link these from their own websites, blogs, profile pages etc.
The entire system rests on the recognition of effort taken to achieve these badges within organisations that issue badges (known as issuers) and by others outside of this framework. Hence visibility is a key requirement for this idea to take hold and it would make sense that learners should take the opportunity to display their badges whenever and wherever appropriate. The higher the visibility of Open Badges the more it works in favour of all learners.
Issuer
The Issuer is an organisation that has structured badges around learning activities. This organisation might be very formal or informal - it is not expected that badge issuers are all innovative online education projects. It could be that very formal and well established organisations could adopt the Open Badge idea to inspire and recognise ongoing learning within their organisation. An issuer could also be an individual - a mentor, for example, that guides people through a learning process.
The issuer must construct a layered badge taxonomy - staging badges and connecting them to specific learning events.
Although the Mozilla site promoting Open Badges claims "Because of the OBI’s open infrastructure, it’s easy to become an issuer: just meet the required badge specifications."1 this is (unsurprisingly) a very technocentric assertion. Implementation of the technical infrastructure for managing badges is one thing and can be done quickly with good technical support - designing a good badge system for your organisation is not so easy and requires much more forethought in advance of the technical implementation. Since it is early days the best strategy is to either go it alone and design this yourself or join the OpenBadges list and draw on the resources and experience of those that have been through this process before.
Once the structure has been designed the issuing organisation must choose a solution for the issuing technology. So far there are 4 existing issuing applications which can be found at the OpenBadges github2 (a source code repository).
Issuing technology looks after four primary tasks:
- creation of badges - the generation of the actual badges which correspond to the badge structure you have designed for your organisation
- awarding of badges - the assignment of badges to specific learners identified by their email address. It is anticipated that you know the learners email address or that you have processes to acquire and manage this information.
- verification of badges - a process to enable the badges to be verified by external parties (through technical means).
- pushing of badges to openbadges.org - pushing learners badges to a centralised store. This is a central point through which learners can manage their badges acquired through multiple issuing organisations.
Back Pack
A Backpack is a centralised service where learners can manage their badges. The Backpack is an online platform like OpenBagdes.org1 . Learners register with this service using the same email account they used to earn badges on various sites. When registered with the Backpack the learner can aggregate all the badges they have earned from numerous sites and create publicly accessible pages to display them.
In this way a Backpack service provides trusted verification of your badge for other interested parties. A future employer (for example) can trust that the learner has earned the badge because:
- The trusted Backpack site - in this case OpenBadges.org - is displaying the badge only after having verified its legitimacy.
- The information displayed verifies the issuer details and displays them. Interested parties can visit the issuer pages and double check both the legitimacy of the issuer if necessary and the credentials of the page.
- http://beta.openbadges.org/^
Displaying Badges
Backpack services provide tools to enable you to push your badges to publicly accessible webpages. However it is also anticipated that other sites will want to display these credentials (badges) or, more importantly, learners will want social networking sites, blogs etc to provide functionality so they can display their badges.
The strategy here can be either :
- the learner uploads the bade image somehow to a social networking service using currently available widgets. This is probably how most of it will work at the beginning but the process lacks any verification process - how do others know the uploaded badges are legitimate?
- the web platform provides a widget or functionality which interacts with a Backpack service. The Backpack service verifies the badges for the learner and consequently the badges are displayed on the learners profile page in the social network etc
Of the two both would happen but the preferred option is obviously the second because it involves a process to verify that the badges have been legitimately earned.
However, although it sounds reasonable the technical framework to support this is currently primitive. A displayer API1 is currently in development but by no means usable at present.
The intention is that badges themselves have all the information required to verify a badge but at this moment it seems (there is conflicting information on the documentation about this) this is not encouraged because there is no failsafe way to ensure that this embedded information is legitimate either.
So for the meantime while the OpenBadges site does claim there is a simple way to be a 'displayer' - "The OBI is open and supports any independent displayer that conforms to the necessary displaying specifications."2 this is incorrect at present.
That is not necessarily negative since the OpenBadges project is working to fill these gaps and the other elements of the ecosystem mean that badges can be earned, issued and displayed even though the displaying process is not yet optimal. In time it seems this will be resolved too.
- https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Displayer-API^
- http://openbadges.org/en-US/displayer.html^
Assertions and Badges
There is conflicting information in the documentation about whether badges should contain information that enables anyone to verify a badge. If there is to be verification information embedded into the badge (image file) then it is to be an assertion. An assertion is just a URL (eg http://booktype-test.sourcefabric.org/_badge/badge/sharer/awards/8.json). You can paste any assertion URL into your browser and you should see a response like the following
{"issued_on": "2012-04-07", "badge": {"issuer": {"origin": "http://booktype-test.sourcefabric.org/accounts/AdamHyde", "contact": "adam@flossmanuals.net", "name": "AdamHyde"}, "criteria": "http://booktype-test.sourcefabric.org/_badge/badge/sharer", "version": "0.5.0", "name": "Sharer", "description": "Sharer badge description yoyo"}, "recipient": "adam@booki.cc", "evidence": "http://booktype-test.sourcefabric.org/_badge/badge/sharer/awards/8"} This information is verification that the learner (recipient) with the email address 'adam@booki.cc' has earned the badge 'Sharer'.
The reason that this statement is not made in 'human readable' form is because the information is really for other web services (like the Backpack) to retrieve and analyse. However if you enter the 'evidence' URL into a browser (in this case http://booktype-test.sourcefabric.org/_badge/badge/sharer/awards/8) then you should see a webpage formatted in a nice way for humans.
The real core of this entire system is the assertion information that you see displayed above. This is the information that an employer or webservice can use to verify that the badge was infact awarded to the learner.
As mentioned before there is conflicting advice in the Open Badge documentation about the 'baking' strategy. Baking is the process of embedding the assertion into the badge. All image files allow for information to be embedded in them - this is used commonly by digital cameras to store date information etc in the image file. Baking the assertion into a badge is technically easy - but that is actually a problem. It is easy to bake (embed) any assertion into any badge. It is also possible to delete these assertions or change them.
There is some suggestion in the documentation that a better security process is going to be development ("Signed Assertion is on the development roadmap."1 ). However although it is suggested this is in the roadmap it is not2 . This appears to be a simple oversight and I am sure the more secure assertion development will be done, the exclusion in the roadmap is just a sign that this project, while usable in its current state, is very embryonic.
Regardless, the problem of the insecurity of baked assertions highlights that the real value of this system is actually the assertion URL and its use within trusted networks of Issuers, Backpack services, and displayers. The assertion is the currency used between all these parties and it is in essence far more important than the badges (image files) themselves. The badge images are really candy although important since a project which promoted assertion URLs as a method for gaining credentials is probably not going to appear very appealing to learners.
What this also means is that the value of the credential (badge/assertion) is completely reliant on the integrity of all three parties - Issuer, Backpack service, and Displayer. Additionally the further away from the issuer you get the more the trust degrades. Displayers being the weakest link.
OpenBadges.org
What OpenBadge.org does
OpenBadges.org is simultaneously the promotional site for Open Badges and the 'reference' (primary) Backpack service.
OpenBadges.org enables any learner to create and account and aggregate their badges from disparate issuing sites. Openbadges.org verifies all the assertions and displays badges on a learners profile page so that they can manage them. Management tasks primarily consist of grouping badges into public pages which can then be seen by others. In essence it helps a learner develop a badge based 'curriculum vitae'.
Anyone can create an account on OpenBadges but be careful to do it with the same email address with which you earned the badges.
How to use it
Django-Badger
What it does
Django-badger is an issuing application. It is a web based software built on the python framework known as Django. You can either install Django-badger as a standalone service or you can install it as an 'extension' (know in the Django world as an 'app') for an existing Django Project.
In either case the application enables you to create badges, monitor learner progress towards a badge and award badges when learning criteria are reached.
As an example I installed Django-badger as an 'app' in my existing Booktype django project. Booktype is book produciton software (free software) written in Python using the Django framework. This means that the users of Booktype can be issued badges for activities linked to the sharing of content and collaborative book production.
While Django-badger is structured as a larger project and not strictly as a reusable app it doesn't take long to get it to work as an app.