Open uBadges
A Blockchain-powered Digital Credential (‘OPEN’ Digital Badges) Platform
Micro-credentials provide a way to acknowledge achievement and to recognize the acquisition of specific skills. Fresno State has established digital badges experiences in Library information literacy, trainings, and self-paced learning (MOOC) programs with the integration of Learning Management System (LMS). The new Digital Credential Platform is proposed to embrace Blockchain technologies to improve data verifiability, availability, and reliability for the evidence of learning. Once the digital badges are recorded on blockchain, they can’t be altered. It prevents fraud and mutilation of records by the involved entities to mitigate deceptive certificates.
The Digital Credential Platform is designed to rely on open standards avoiding vendor lock-in. The system will be developed based on Blockcerts, an open standard for building apps that issue and verify blockchain-based official records, to embrace the ethos of Open Badges for the full potential of a badge-based ecosystem.
In addition, the platform will be implemented to integrate with LMS through Learning Tool Integration (LTI) to automate the digital badges issuing process after a learning module, course, or program is completed. With LTI, this solution will be fully interoperable with various LMS’es across CSU campuses.
We will also further explore the implementation of “universal transcript” to better catalog a student’s learning — academic and non-academic — for the potential of earning college credits.
This proposal is also part of the Fresno State Innovation Hotspot (http://tiny.cc/fs-ihotspot) effort of establishing a “student-centered” collaboration space and framework to breed future innovations toward High Impact Practices (Graduation Initiative 2025).
