The document discusses Open Badges, a system developed by Mozilla to issue verifiable, portable digital badges for skills and achievements. It received a $1 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The Open Badges Infrastructure (OBI) aims to create an open accreditation/credentialing system where learners can earn badges from any issuer and store them in a portable "backpack." Badges contain metadata linking to evidence of achievement and can be verified and displayed in different sites and platforms like blogs, ePortfolios and social media. Moodle and Mahara will integrate with OBI so that Moodle can issue badges and Mahara can display badges earned in profiles.

1. Open Badges
Carles Bellver
2012

2. www.openbadges.org
Mozilla Foundation

3. $1 million grant
MacArthur Foundation

4. Accreditation/
credentialing system

5. Accreditation/
credentialing system
- “open”
{ - “alternative”
- “micro”

6. “
If we’re successful, the
benefits to learners will
be tremendous.
— blog.mozilla.org

7. “
There is a real chance to
create learning that
works more like the web.
— blog.mozilla.org

8. Badges?

9. “
badge |baj|
noun
a distinctive emblem worn as a mark of
office, membership, achievement, licensed
employment, etc.: name badges | a Girl
Scout badge.
— The New Oxford American Dictionary

10. http://www.flickr.com/photos/benthomasphoto/1592354369
Insignias

11. http://www.flickr.com/photos/35703177@N00/2987260527/
Medals

12. http://www.flickr.com/photos/eezpictures/3299183468/
Accomplishment

13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lincoln_button_1860.jpg
Campaigns

14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tamiment/2784387585/
Support

15. pepe@uji.es
Affiliation

16. Web badges

17. Foursquare
More web badges

18. Google News
http://youtu.be/QP5szEn2dxs
And more

19. People like badges.

20. OB Background
■ Learners are learning everywhere
– But most of that learning doesn’t
“count”.
■ Skills assessment and communication
is limited in current system.
■ Few alternatives to the current
accreditation/credentialing system.

21. OB Goals
■ Develop badges as an alternative
(micro-)accreditation/(micro-)credentialing
system.
■ Avoid silos. Support badges from multiple
issuers across the web.
■ Optimize value: make badges remixable and
shareable with different audiences/sites.
■ Develop an open and decentralized
supporting infrastructure to give learners
control of the entire ecosystem.

22. Open Badge
Infrastructure

23. wiki.mozilla.org/File:Badge-diagram-2.2.jpg

24. wiki.mozilla.org/File:Badge-diagram-2.2.jpg

25. wiki.mozilla.org/File:Badge-diagram-2.2.jpg

26. OBI ecosystem
AUTHENTICATION / CLAIM MAKING
ISSUERS DISPLAYERS
BADGE
EDUCATION API API BLOG
PROVIDERS BACKPACK
METADATA METADATA
FACEBOOK
ORGANIZATIONS
✔ BADGES BADGES ✔ BADGES EPORTFOLIO
WEBSITES
Independent and agnostic. Outside of Open Badge Infrastructure
✔ Users consents to accept badges into backpack & send to website for display
Source: wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

27. Issuers
■ Organization, consortium or individual
who issues badges into the OBI.
■ Issuer issues a badge on their site, then
prompts the Badge Earner to push the
badge into their Backpack.
■ Issuer badge systems are independent
of the Infrastructure.

28. []
ORG ASSESSMENT
ME
ACCREDITATION
CREDENTIALS } OBI

29. []
anybody
ORG ASSESSMENT anything
ME
ACCREDITATION
CREDENTIALS } OBI

30. “
Badges are not
assessments.
— David Wiley

31. Badge Earner
■ A person storing their badges within
the OBI.
■ The Earner has interactions with
Issuers to earn badges, then can
manage and share the badges in their
Backpack out to various Display sites.
■ Learners are a type of Badge Earners.

32. Badge Backpack
■ An authorized data storage plus a
management interface (control, share)
for Earners.
■ Open source and federated – anyone
can take the code and fork it.
■ Mozilla is building a reference or default
Backpack.

33. Badge
■ A single credential demonstrating a
skill, achievement, quality or affiliation.
■ More than a static image or button: its
value comes from the information or
metadata attached to it.

34. Badge – inside
■ A JSON blob of metadata embedded in
a PNG file (“Badge Baking”).
‣ Easily portable, an actual “thing” that
can be emailed around carrying all
the information with it.
‣ Important for decentralization, so that
Earners have more control.

35. Badge – metadata
■ Who issued the badge.
■ The issue date.
■ How the badge was earned.
■ Hyperlinks back to artifacts,
documents, or testimonials
demonstrating the work that lead to
earning the badge.
■ Authentication back to the issuer.

36. Verification
■ “Did the Issuer issue this badge?”,
“Is it still valid or has it expired?”, etc.
■ Verification happens between the
Displayer and the Issuer.
■ Hosted Assertions: metadata points to
a URL that the Displayers can ping.
■ In the future OBI will support Signed
Assertions.

37. Displayers
■ Display of badges is where a significant
part of the value lies: badges are not
siloed or stuck within one site.
■ Earner controls through the Backpack
where badges are displayed.
■ Earners can also make badges public
and discoverable through the Earner’s
email address.

38. Identity
■ Identity is a critical part of the OBI.
■ Identity needs to be open and
decentralized.
■ How? Persona, fka BrowserID.
browserid.org wiki.mozilla.org/Identity
‣ People understand email address
■ They don’t understand OpenID

41. Conclusions (1)
■ Anyone can issue accreditations about
anything.
■ People can keep their own backpacks
full of credentials.
‣ Access & display control.
‣ Attached to detailed accreditation
info and evidence.
‣ Linked back to issuers.

42. “
Compared with the new open
badge systems, the standard
college transcript looks like a
sad and archaic thing.
— The Chronicle of Higher Education

43. Conclusions (2)
■ OBI as an open infrastructure for
presentation portfolios.
■ OBI separates the credentialing and
teaching functions of higher education.
■ What about assessment?

44. “
…no one is paying sufficient
attention to the gap between
learning anything anywhere (OER)
and receiving a recognition (OBI)
– this gap is called “assessment.”
— David Wiley

45. “
…many in the field are overlooking
the place where badges make the
most sense of all – the formal
higher education institution.
— David Wiley

46. Moodle & Mahara
■ Totara Learning Solutions will be
developing an Open Badges solution
for Moodle and Mahara.
‣ Moodle as Issuer.
‣ Mahara as Displayer.

47. OBI ecosystem
AUTHENTICATION / CLAIM MAKING
ISSUERS DISPLAYERS
BADGE
EDUCATION API API BLOG
PROVIDERS BACKPACK
METADATA METADATA
FACEBOOK
ORGANIZATIONS
✔ BADGES BADGES ✔ BADGES EPORTFOLIO
WEBSITES
Independent and agnostic. Outside of Open Badge Infrastructure
✔ Users consents to accept badges into backpack & send to website for display
Source: wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

48. OBI ecosystem
AUTHENTICATION / CLAIM MAKING
ISSUERS DISPLAYERS
BADGE
EDUCATION API API BLOG
PROVIDERS BACKPACK
METADATA METADATA
FACEBOOK
ORGANIZATIONS
✔ BADGES BADGES ✔ BADGES EPORTFOLIO
WEBSITES
Independent and agnostic. Outside of Open Badge Infrastructure
✔ Users consents to accept badges into backpack & send to website for display
Source: wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

49. OBI ecosystem
AUTHENTICATION / CLAIM MAKING
ISSUERS DISPLAYERS
moodle
EDUCATION API
BADGE
API BLOG
PROVIDERS BACKPACK
METADATA METADATA
FACEBOOK
ORGANIZATIONS
✔ BADGES BADGES ✔ BADGES EPORTFOLIO
WEBSITES
Independent and agnostic. Outside of Open Badge Infrastructure
✔ Users consents to accept badges into backpack & send to website for display
Source: wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

50. OBI ecosystem
AUTHENTICATION / CLAIM MAKING
ISSUERS DISPLAYERS
moodle
EDUCATION API
BADGE
API BLOG
PROVIDERS BACKPACK
METADATA METADATA
FACEBOOK
ORGANIZATIONS
✔ BADGES BADGES ✔ BADGES EPORTFOLIO
WEBSITES
Independent and agnostic. Outside of Open Badge Infrastructure
✔ Users consents to accept badges into backpack & send to website for display
Source: wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

51. OBI ecosystem
AUTHENTICATION / CLAIM MAKING
ISSUERS DISPLAYERS
moodle
EDUCATION API
BADGE
API BLOG
PROVIDERS BACKPACK
METADATA METADATA
FACEBOOK
ORGANIZATIONS
✔ BADGES BADGES ✔ BADGES EPORTFOLIO
WEBSITES
mahara
Independent and agnostic. Outside of Open Badge Infrastructure
✔ Users consents to accept badges into backpack & send to website for display
Source: wiki.mozilla.org/Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

52. Details
■ Integration with Moodle’s Activity and Course completion
functionality.
■ Certificate module will dispense Open Badge PNG
instead of PDF files.
■ Badges will be stored in Moodle and can also be
downloadable by users once they have earned them.
■ A web service will provide badge authenticity verification.
■ New blocks for Moodle and Mahara will display badges
on users' profiles pages.
■ Use of Moodle Portfolio API to push badges
automatically to Mahara.

53. OBI Tech Overview
■ Issuer API
■ Displayer API
■ Verification API
■ Endorsement API
■ Metadata Specification
■ Reference Implementation

54. OBI 2012 Roadmap
Q1 OBI Beta ✓
Q2 Website
Q3 Research and Planning for 1.0
Q4 OBI 1.0

55. More info
www.openbadges.org
wiki.mozilla.org/Badges
Open Badges and Moodle
moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=197834
Openness and the Future of Assessment
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/237

56. Carles Bellver
bellverc@uji.es
http://cent.uji.es