IMS Digital Credentialing Initiative
You may have heard the exciting news that IMS Global, the leading education technology standards body announced today that they are kicking off a new IMS Digital Credentialing initiative. The new initiative will...
"augment current IMS interoperability standards and extend Open Badges as needed to support deeper integration and exchange within extant systems, while exploring new models of badge system design, storage, usage, and evaluation in the institutional context."
For those of you new to IMS, here’s a bit about what they do from their website:
"IMS’s influential community of educational institutions, suppliers, and government organizations develops open interoperability standards, supports adoption with technical services, and encourages adoption through programs that highlight effective practices."
This is exciting news for the open badging work, which was incubated initially at Mozilla Foundation and then expanded upon at the Badge Alliance. We've been working for years to get the kind of access and influence that IMS can bring to the table, and now we can focus on building the necessary extensions and/or new standards needed to make badges usable and valuable to institutions and employers across the world.
It's also a very natural evolution of the work. Looking back, I see some distinct phases that we've gone through to push the efforts and adoption forward, and this feels like the necessary and obvious next piece of that story.
Phase 1: Inception and infrastructure building at Mozilla - We started the Open Badges work at Mozilla Foundation in late 2010. The first couple of years was very much a let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom period to better understand how people would use badges and stimulate early thought leadership and adoption. During this time we helped launch and support the initial DML competition, the winners of which were some of those first issuing organizations. We held small working group events to dig into the idea. With the initial community, we built and launched the alpha and beta versions of the Open Badge Standard and a set of APIs (together, called the Open Badge Infrastructure) and Backpack reference implementation.
Phase 2: Exemplar building, still through Mozilla - In 2013, the focus began to shift toward exemplars: starting with the Chicago Summer of Learning and following with the broader Cities of Learning, as well as Mozilla Webmaker badges and Connected Educator Month. This phase saw us rolling up our sleeves and diving deep into badge system design, technology, policy, privacy, and much more. In the process, we learned an incredible amount about the constraints of the existing specification, on-the-ground reactions to badges, policy barriers, etc.
Phase 3: Ecosystem building/empowerment through the BA - In early 2014, we announced the creation of the Badge Alliance, a network of organizations and individuals working together on building this ecosystem. We did this because we recognized that the badging work was already bigger than any one organization. We wanted to formally situate ownership and control in the ecosystem itself, dig into tough issues together and zero in on what's needed to make badges succeed through necessary channels or sectors. We've written a lot about that first cycle and the contribution and success from that work. This phase is ongoing and has prepared us for the next parallel phase…
Phase 4: Standardization, Currency-building and scale - In parallel to some of the BA work in the second half of the year, we've started to move into another phase - one that's focused on doubling down around validation, usage, value, and scale. We've seen several standards efforts start through ANSI and ASTM. The Open Badge Standard is well underway in being instantiated through the w3c. Now with the IMS initiative, it will be possible to have even more attention and focus on what's needed to make badges work for learners and their goals. That means badges being valued and accepted within and across institutions, badges being used for hiring in workforce, and more.
So what will the IMS work look like? That's still in development and the BA team and I are working with IMS - and hopefully you - to further define the necessary direction and standards. There is already some incredible work taking place around competency-based education and re-thinking the transcript that seem obvious places to integrate badging. Additionally, IMS may work with the community to build extensions to the existing standard, or new standards altogether, ones built around different 'pieces' of the badge value chain like endorsement, validation or usage.
Still a lot of unknowns, but SO much potential. And here's a little more about the knowns and some other things you might be thinking about:
"Standardization" feels like a scary word. Is that code for closed? How does it work within the values of open badges?
The badges work has been built around a standard since day 0. Interoperability, portability and value transfer are the only way that this whole thing works and that badges meet their potential. Standards are very important. That said, the spirit of the badging work aims to be flexible, inclusive and innovative so that we can continue to capture and legitimize more learning and experiences. So at the same time, we have to be careful to not over-standardize the work. It will be a delicate balance for sure. Early on, we actually intentionally avoided defining taxonomies or other standards of any kind because we did not want to make decisions that would constrain how people used and experimented with badges. But I think we're in a different place now for at least a couple of reasons:
The work is more mature with more awareness and interest, and well, more badges. We've talked a lot about currency being a critical goal/focus at this stage and I think a necessary piece of that is defining more structure around how badges are defined and/or how they are valued/interpreted.
The work is really big. Early on, standards would have dictated the only way to participate, whereas now there is enough adoption and exploration that we can create standards for particular types of badges or goals, without requiring alignment or constraining the entire ecosystem.
Again, the Open Badge standard was and still is critical to the vision of badges, and ensures interoperability across the ever-growing ecosystem. Those standards and extensions that we build on top of it can help to further develop and advance adoption, usage and currency in specific sectors or for specific goals. And again, IMS, a nonprofit built around ensuring interoperability and effectiveness, is the right organization to help play a driving role.
How will the IMS work interact with the existing Open Badges Standard?
This work does not replace the Open Badge Standard. That is still the baseline specification for ensuring badge interoperability across the ecosystem. So still use that: it's our foundation. There is actually a lot of work that's well underway to further instantiate that standard through the w3c, which is pretty big-time as well. The IMS work, while still being defined, will likely build extensions on top of that standard, or new standards altogether, to focus on different functions, uses, sectors or taxonomies. That's for you to help us figure out.
How does the IMS work fit into the Badge Alliance?
The Badge Alliance was created to inspire, promote and support efforts exactly like this. We wanted to shift the ownership, accountability and empowerment into the network itself. And IMS is answering that call by charging forward with their own piece of the puzzle. We're very excited to work with them on shaping it.
What else? We're looking forward to working with you on this exciting new work. So send us your questions, thoughts, concerns, high fives, etc.
