computer science

Mozilla Open Badges

Mozilla Open Badges is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Mozilla Open Badges rather than just read about it. In short: Image files that contain verifiable information about learning achievements, Open Badges are based on a group of specifications and open technical standards originally developed by the Mozilla Foundation with funding from the MacArthur Foundation. The Open Badges standard describes a method for packaging information about accomplishments, embedding it into portable image files as a digital badge, and establishing an…

Key takeaways

Mozilla Open Badges belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Mozilla Open Badges to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Mozilla Open Badges from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Image files that contain verifiable information about learning achievements, Open Badges are based on a group of specifications and open technical standards originally developed by the Mozilla Foundation with funding from the MacArthur Foundation. The Open Badges standard describes a method for packaging information about accomplishments, embedding it into portable image files as a digital badge, and establishing an infrastructure for badge validation. The standard was originally maintained by the Badge Alliance Standard Working Group, but transitioned officially to the IMS Global Learning Consortium as of January 1, 2017. IMS rebranded to 1EdTech Consortium in 2022.

History In 2011, the Mozilla Foundation announced their plan to develop an open technical standard called Open Badges to create and build a common system for the issuance, collection, and display of digital badges on multiple instructional sites. To launch the Open Badges project, Mozilla and MacArthur engaged with over 300 nonprofit organizations, government agencies and others about informal learning, breaking down education monopolies and fuelling individual motivation. Much of this work was guided by "Open Badges for Lifelong Learning", an early working paper created by Mozilla and the MacArthur Foundation. In 2012, Mozilla launched Open Badges 1.0 and partnered with the City of Chicago to launch The Chicago Summer of Learning (CSOL), a badges initiative to keep local youth ages four to 24 active and engaged during the summer. Institutions and organizations like Purdue University, MOUSE and the UK-based DigitalME adopted badges, and Mozilla saw international interest in badging programs from Australia and Italy to China and Scotland. By 2013, over 1,450 organizations were issuing Open Badges and Mozilla's partnership with Chicago had grown into the Cities of Learning Initiative, an opportunity to apply CSOL's success across the country. In 2014, Mozilla launched the Badge Alliance, a network of organizations and individuals committed to building the open badging ecosystem and advancing the Open Badges specification. Founding members include Mozilla, the MacArthur Foundation, DigitalME, Sprout Fund, and Blackboard. More than 650 organizations from six continents signed up through the Badge Alliance to contribute to the Open Badges ecosystem. In 2015, the Badge Alliance spun out of Mozilla and became a part of MacArthur Foundation spin off, Collective Shift - a nonprofit devoted to redesigning social systems for a connected world. Later that year, Collective Shift partnered with Concentric Sky to develop Open Badges 2.0. That same year, Concentric Sky launched the open source project Badgr to serve as a reference implementation for Open Badges. The Badgr Server is written in Python using the Django framework; source code is available under version 3 of the GNU Affero General Public License. In early 2016, IMS Global announced their commitment to Open Badges as an interoperable standard for digital credentials, and in late 2016, Mozilla announced that stewardship of the Open Badges standard would transition officially to IMS Global. In late 2018, Mozilla announced that it would retire the Mozilla Backpack program that enabled users to collect and showcase their Open Badge credentials and migrate all users to Concentric Sky's open source Badgr platform.

Technical details Open Badges are designed to serve a broad range of digital badge use cases, including both academic and non-academic uses. The core Open Badge specification is made up of three types of Badge Objects:

Assertion Represents an awarded badge. It contains information about a single badge that belongs to an individual earner. BadgeClass Contains information about the accomplishment(s) a specific badge recognizes. As the same badge may be awarded to many earners, there may be many Assertions that correspond to a single BadgeClass. IssuerOrganization Contains a collection of information about the entity (e.g., person, organization) which issued a badge. Beginning with version 1.1, valid JSON-LD must be used for Open Badges. Version 1.1 also adds Extensions, a structure that follows a standard format for collaboratively extending Badge Objects so that any issuer, earner, or consumer can understand the information added to badges. Any issuer may define and publish Extensions to include new types of metadata in badges. Any other issuer may use the same extensions to publish similar information in a mutually recognizable way. An exploratory prototype draft xAPI vocabulary has been defined so that Open Badges may be referenceable from Experience API activity streams.

References

External links Official website Open Badges Technical Specification (Version 2.0 Public Draft, as of 12 August 2017.) "Badge Wiki". We Are Open Co-op. MozillaWiki on Badges (Historical)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Mozilla Open Badges

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Mozilla Open Badges claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Mozilla Open Badges before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Mozilla Open Badges ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Mozilla Open Badges

In research: Mozilla Open Badges appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Mozilla Open Badges in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Mozilla Open Badges is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cloud standards, Computer icons, E-learning, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Mozilla Open Badges outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Mozilla Open Badges in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Mozilla Open Badges means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Mozilla Open Badges out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Mozilla Open Badges in simple terms?

Why does Mozilla Open Badges matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Mozilla Open Badges?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Mozilla Open Badges.