Verifiable digital credentials allow learners to control and share records of their accomplishments in a way that is privacy-preserving, independently verifiable, and tamper-evident. For learners, their credentials are ultimately more valuable because they are easier to manage, present, and verify on terms set by the learner themselves.
The basic idea is that learners can present proof of their accomplishments instantly to potential employers, admissions offices, government agencies, or whatever recipient they choose. The receiver of the credential can verify its validity, and be confident that it hasn’t been tampered with, ensuring it belongs to the person presenting it. The entire process can be completed in seconds!
Recently we shipped the first increment of support for verifiable credentials on the Open edX platform. The first increment allows learners to share program credentials to wallets that support two data models, Verifiable Credentials Data Model v1.1 and the Open Badges Specification v3.0. Our testing and development targeted sharing credential via the Learner Credentials Wallet, an application for iOS and Android phones, created by the Digital Credentials Consortium. The Learner Credentials Wallet supports storing credentials using both data models.
Learners can choose a program credential to share and scan a QR code to import it into their wallet on their mobile device.
With the first increment, only program credentials are supported and it’s required that the Credentials Service is deployed along with frontend-app-learner-record. The feature is for anyone using the latest version of the Palm release, or running off the latest version of the Open edX main branch.
We are currently planning the next increments of support for verifiable digital credentials on the Open edX platform. We expect to invest in supporting additional data models, expanding to support course certificates, expanding to support badges, and mapping credentials to content taxonomies to communicate clearly what skills learners have acquired.
If you are interested in helping to test or refine the credentials roadmap, join the conversation in the #learner-credentials channel in the Open edX Slack!
If you’re interested in setting up Verifiable Credentials support in your Open edX instance start here.
