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Badges/Onboarding-Issuer

< Badges
Revision as of 15:58, 11 March 2013 by Emgollie (talk | contribs)

A. Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI)

NOTE: The documentation below is for general on-boarding. If you want the more technical documentation, please see our github pages.

I. BACKGROUND

Why Are We Doing This?

Learning happens everywhere. Yet it's often difficult to be recognized for skills and achievements that are gained outside of school. Mozilla's Open Badges project is working to solve that problem by making it easy for anyone anywhere to issue, earn, and display badges. The results: broad recognition of 21st century skills, unlocking of career and educational opportunities, and learners everywhere being able to level up in their lives and work.

Goals

  • Develop badges as a system for alternative accreditation, credentialing, and recognition;
  • Help badges expand beyond siloed environments to be broadly shareable;
  • Truly support learners learning everywhere;
  • Optimize the value of those badges by allowing badges to be remixable and shareable with different audiences;
  • Develop a supporting infrastructure to standardize the process and support each learner;
  • Create an infrastructure that is open and as decentralized as possible to give learners control and support of the entire ecosystem.

Description

Enabling learners to earn badges wherever they're learning across the web requires support for multiple individual badge issuers. Empowering learners to use their badges as legitimate credentials requires support for sharing of badges across many display sites. The Open Badges framework is designed to allow any learner to collect badges from multiple sites, tied to a single identity, and then share them out across various sites, including personal blogs to social networking channels. It is critical for this infrastructure to be open to give learners control over their own learning and credentials, allow anyone to issue badges, and for each learner to carry their badges with them across the Web and other contexts.

II. TECH SPECS

III. OPEN BADGES ECOSYSTEM

Diagram

 

Overview

  • An issuing organization or individual makes a badge or series of badges available on their website and prompts their community to earn them. The earner sends the badge to their Backpack.
    • The badge becomes portable this through the Issuer API which provides script to present the earner with a modal dialog that requests their consent to add the issuer's badge(s) to their Backpack.
  • Issuer can also push badges to the Mozilla Baking Service where the assertion URL representing JSON blobs is embedded into PNG files
    • n.b. This is only necessary if the issuer wants the earner to have the ability to store badges outside of the OBI. Otherwise badge baking is handled through the Issuer API.
  • Displayers pull unpacked badges (JSON) out of the Backpack based on earner action and privacy settings.
  • Public badges are discoverable based on earner’s email address.
  • Earners can share their badges through their Backpack and grant permission for a particular site to display that collection of badges.
  • Displayers authenticate badges with the Issuer using the Verification check.

IV. DEFINITIONS/KEY TERMS

Badge

The core currency of exchange. A single signal that demonstrates a skill, achievement, interest, or affiliation.

Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI)

Open infrastructure technology supports independent badge issuers, display sites, and reference implementation of the badges Backpack. Includes the metadata spec, APIs, verification framework, and badges Backpack.

Mozilla Backpack

The core authorized data store and management interface of Mozilla’s reference implementation of the Backpack. Each earner has their own Backpack where their badges data is stored.

Metadata Spec

The definition of the information behind the badge. Each badge features a set of metadata that describes the badge, including badge name, badge issuer, date of issue, criteria URL, evidence URL, and standards URL.

Badge Baking

Embedding the assertion URL (which points to all metadata) into a PNG file to create a fully robust, portable badge.

Issuer API

Interface specifications for sending badges to the Backpack. Displayer API The interface specifications for expanding badges beyond the Backpack (including display sites and widgets).

Verification API

Communication channels and framework to support badge verification.

Endorsement API

Communication channels and framework to support badge endorsement, including focuses on valid signatures.

  • n.b. Endorsement employs the same signing mechanism as Badge Verification
Badge Earner

A learner who stores their badges and engages with the Open Badges Infrastructure. This learner has had interactions with issuers to earn badges and uses their Backpack to manage and share those badges.

Issuer

Organization or individual who issues Open Badges to their communities.

Displayer

A website, organization, or person who accesses publicly shared Open Badges and displays them for badge earners.

Endorser

An organization or individual who “endorses” a badge by signing it with their private encryption key. Trusted third party signers may emerge.

B. Issuer

An organization, consortium, group or individual who issues badges into the OBI. The OBI is open and supports any independent Issuer that conforms to the necessary badge and issuing specifications.

I. BACKGROUND

  • Issuer badge systems are independent of the Infrastructure - how you assess work, decide who earns badges, issue badges within your site, display badges within your site, etc. - that's all up to each Issuer
  • We are intentionally pushing the innovation to the edges - meaning the Issuers have complete control over how their badge system works
  • We want to support innovation, not constrain it
  • The touchpoint with the OBI is pushing each badge into the designated Backpack for the earner
  • Issuers do not need to register with the OBI - they simply push badges into earner Backpacks utilizing the Issuer Javascript API.

II. REQUIREMENTS

  • Issuers must have web server capable of serving requests to the general internet
  • Issuers must have hosting ability
  • Issuers must have ability to make a POST request from their server backend and read a JSON response.
  • Issuers must have email addresses for Earners and must be able to email Earners
  • Issuers must have badges (or be able to convert their badges) into the format (metadata spec) that the Assertion expects.
  • Earners must be registered with whatever Backpack the Issuer is trying to push badges to, or (for later versions) the Issuer must ask Earner which Backpack they want to push badges to and honor that request
  • For verification:
    • If doing Hosted Assertions (currently available)
      • Issuers must maintain a server with the Badge Assertion information (at the unique badge URL) to verify each badge
    • If doing Signed Assertions (on development roadmap)
      • Issuers must generate public/private key pair and maintain the hosted public key
      • Issuers must sign the badges themselves; sign the whole package and push badge to Earner Backpacks through the Issuer Javascript API.

III. BADGE CREATION FLOW

  1. Have an email address for the Earner
  2. Create and host an Assertion on your site
  3. Create and host the badge PNG; this is a single PNG for all badges, not a single physical PNG per issued badge.
  4. Integrate your site with the Backpack via the Issuer API

n.b. The Issuer API is a script that can be dropped-in to any Badge Issuer's website to provide a way for Earners to add an Issuer's badges to their Backpack. There's no need to bake the badges yourself. The API takes care of it for you.

IV. OPEN BADGES Related Widgets created by the community

n.b. Updated list can be found here: https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Open-Badges-related-widgets

V. Open Badger

OpenBadger is a lightweight OBI compliant badge issuing platform. It will make creating and issuing badges easy for non-technical users. We've done some speculation but more to come on the Open Badger github.

C. Badge

The core currency of exchange. A single credential demonstrating a skill, achievement, quality or affiliation.

  • Representation - Assertion url representing chunks of JSON data embedded into a PNG file
  • Badge Assertion aka Badge Manifest - Earner identity information (<algorithm>$<hash(email + salt)>) plus badge information (JSON metadata)
  • Verified Badge - Badges that have an assertion URL. OBI currently supports verification of badges through Hosted Assertions. i.e. When Issuer pushes badge to the OBI, metadata is pushed to a unique and persistent url aka assertion url. Issuer maintains Badge Assertion and Displayers can ping the assertion URL to confirm verification.
  • Endorsed Badge - Badges that have been signed by a third party/endorser. The Backpack verifies the signature against the signer’s public key and if confirmed, accepts the badge as an endorsed badge. The endorsement information is represented with the badge as a layer of trust on the badge’s validity.

D. Backpack

Backpack is an authorized data storage plus a management interface for earners of Open Badges. Each earner will have their own Backpack that holds all of their badges and gives them an interface to manage, control and share their badges.

  • The Backpack as well as the entire system is open source and federated. Earners or Issuers can take the code and fork it.
  • Earners may decide to create and host their own Backpack so that they have complete control over their badges.
  • Mozilla has built a reference or default Backpack which will hold all of the badge Assertions (hashed user email + badge data) for each earner.

E. Metadata Spec

I. OVERVIEW

  • A badge is an assertion url representing chunks of JSON data embedded into a PNG file
  • The metadata should carry all the information needed to understand a badge. This ensures that badges can be fully understood and verified no matter where they are shared or used.
  • This is the data presented in the Assertion URL on the Issuer's server

II. FIELDS

  • Required
    • recipient: Salted hash of the email address for the earner receiving the badge.
    • salt: The salt used in the hash construction of the recipient’s email address.
    • badge: The structure describing the badge.
      • version: The version of the badge
      • name: Human-readable name of the badge being issued. Maximum of 128 characters.
      • image: URL for image representing the badge. Should be a square and in PNG format. Maximum size of 256kb.
      • description: Description of the badge being issued. Maximum of 128 characters.
      • criteria: URL describing the badge and criteria for earning the badge (Not the specific instance of the badge).
      • issuer: Information about the Issuer:
        • origin: Origin of the Issuer. This is the <protocol>://<host>:<port>. Must match the origin of the Hosted Assertion (and in the future, the origin of the public key).
        • name : Human-readable name of the issuing agent.
  • Optional
    • evidence: Earner-specific URL with information about this specific badge instance. Should contain information about how the specific Earer earned the badge.
    • expires: Date when the badge expires. If omitted, the badge never expires.
      • The badge is not removed from the Earner’s Backpack after the expiration date – there will be some visual/technical indicator that the badge is expired and needs to be re-upped. Must be formatted "YYYY-MM-DD" or a unix timestamp
    • issued_on: Date when badge was issued. If omitted, the issue date will be set to the date the badge was pushed to the Backpack. Must be formatted "YYYY-MM-DD" or a unix timestamp
    • issuer: Information about the Issuer:
      • org: (OPTIONAL) Organization for which the badge is being issued. An example is if a scout badge is being issued, the "name" of the Issuer could be "Boy Scouts" and the "org" could be "Troop #218"
      • contact: (OPTIONAL) A human-monitored email address associated with the Issuer.
  • n.b. We've discussed having an additional field that is customizable by the Earner - so that the Earner could add a personal evidence URL, or could add additional information or context to the badge. This would NOT be something that the Issuer would include in the Badge Assertion (so it is not listed above) and would most likely be managed by the Earner through the Backpack.
  • n.b. Issuers can put a reasonable amount of extra material into the badge, but that material must be static -- once the badge is issued, any change to that information must not change. This is to prevent someone from issuing one badge, then sneakily changing it later to another badge unbeknownst to the Earner. There currently isn't a method for updating the information received in the badge, though it's not off the table.

F. PNG Files / Badge Baking Service

I. BACKGROUND

  • Each badge is a JSON blob of metadata embedded in a PNG file
  • This allows the badge to be more easily portable - an actual 'thing' that can be emailed around, carrying all the information with it
  • Ultimately, this is important for decentralization of the system - so that Earners have more control over where their badges live

II. BETA: BAKING SERVICE

  • For beta, Mozilla will be providing a 'baking' service to package the JSON into a PNG file
  • REQUIREMENTS: To bake a badge, you must be hosting a Badge Assertion on your site.
  • Issuers will still send the Badge Assertion to Mozilla, but instead of sending it directly to the Backpack, they will now send it to the Mozilla Baking Service. Then Mozilla will package it into a PNG and deliver back to the Issuer who can then send to the Earner
    • The purpose of this is:
      • A) to avoid SPAMing the Earner with unwanted badges (which we can control in beta) and
      • B) to give the Earners ultimate control over where the badges go.
    • n.b. If you are building a new system, we strongly recommend using the Javascript Issuer API for awarding badges. The API takes care of the badge baking for the Issuer.
  • Mozilla will provide the 'tools' for unpacking the PNG file through the OBI
  • PNG files will be unpacked in the Backpack where each Earner can view, manage and organize their badges (and see all the metadata behind each badge)
  • PNG files will be unpacked for the Displayer API so that Displayers will just have the raw data to work with on their end.

III. BADGE IMAGE STANDARDS

  • Image must be a PNG (for Beta).
    • Potentially: In later iterations, we can convert to a PNG
  • Images should be square and not exceed 256kb
  • Looking at standardizing dimensions to 90 x 90
  • Image is provided as a URL to the image on the Issuer server in the metadata
  • Mozilla will cache the image in at least 2 sizes
  • When a badge is displayed, it will be loaded from the Mozilla cache to avoid extra burden on the Issuer servers, also in case the Issuer is not available or link is broken

G. Verification

I. OVERVIEW

  • To avoid gaming and duplication, the OBI is built to support badge verification.
  • This handles the questions of "Did this Issuer issue this badge to this Earner on this date? Is this badge still valid or has it expired?"
  • The OBI provides the channel for this verification to happen through the Backpack, but must communicate with the Issuer.
  • Issuer must be online to verify badges. (we are exploring a cache to cover verification for x amount of time)
  • Most verification will be done by the Displayers. Displayers should not display a badge that cannot be verified.

II. VERIFICATION METHOD

  • OBI currently supports verification of badges through Hosted Assertions. i.e. When Issuer pushes a badge to the OBI, metadata is pushed to a unique and persistent url aka assertion url. Issuer maintains the Badge Assertion and Displayers can ping the assertion URL to verify the badge.
    • Displayer puts the Earner’s email through a salted hash function and sees if it matches with the hash value indicated for the recipient in the badge metadata. If values match, the badge belongs to the Earner that claims it, if not, it is being spoofed.
    • Cons: Overhead for Issuer to maintain unique and persistent url for each badge.
  • In the future we will support Signed Assertions, which will mean signing a badge assertion with your private key and hosting a public key at a well known, public URL.
    • Pros: Less overhead for Issuer, just need to host public key
  • Further down the road, we will probably try to support DNSSEC for public key discovery.
  • Unverified Badge handling
    • If badge is passed through by an Issuer and the signature (when we support this method of verification) is invalid, OBI rejects it.
    • If badge is verified initially but somewhere down the line it becomes unverified, OBI notifies user. [Needs to be worked out more.]

III. FUNCTIONAL FLOW

  1. Badge (within it, its assertion) exists in the Backpack
  2. User attempts to display badge via a display site widget
  3. Display site takes the earner’s email and puts it through a salted hash function.
    1. eg. hash (‘hipjoe@example.com’ + salt)
  4. Display site compares the resulting value with the value indicated for the recipient in the badge metadata.
  5. If values match, badge is verified and Displayer displays the badge. If not, Displayer should reject the badge.

H. Displayers

  • Display of badges is where a significant part of the value lies - badges are not siloed or 'stuck' within one site but can be combined with badges from multiple Issuers and then shared out for different audiences/purposes
  • Earner will control where badges are displayed through the Backpack
  • Earner can create groups of badges and share through the Backpack to Displayers that have connected via the Displayer API
  • Earners can also make badges public - in that case, those badges would be discoverable by Displayers if they had the Earner’s email address
  • At its most basic: if a site has an Earner's email address, they will be able to query the Backpack for all of Earner's public badges. They will get back JSON representation of the badges

I. Identity

I. OVERVIEW

  • Identity is a critical part of the OBI because we need to know/recognize an Earner all across the web as they collect badges from different Issuers/sites
  • Identity needs to be open and decentralized
  • We are utilizing verified email as identity through the use of the Mozilla product called Persona
  • People understand the concept of an email address
    • c.f. They have difficulty understanding OpenID
  • Many sites already use email for login
    • Even those that don't generally collect it (for resetting password)
  • We don't need to retain any profile or personal information about the Earner, all we need is the email address.

II. FUNCTIONAL FLOW FOR VERIFYING IDENTITY IN BACKPACK

  1. User validates identity to Mozilla's Verified Email
  2. User creates an account with Mozilla (same as sync account)
  3. User asserts which email addresses he or she owns.
  4. User does an SMTP challenge (system emails user a token link they must click) to prove ownership
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