2. Content
What are Open-Badges
Understanding Open Badges System
How to Implement an Open Badge System
Backpack Options
Implementation Team
Out of the box solution
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6
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12
14
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3. Understanding
Badges

4. Digital Badges
Digital badges can be defined as digital accreditation of any skill or achievement. A site may give you an “expert”
badge for being an extensive user of that website. Similarly gaming websites may award you badges for your gaming
skills.
Digital Open Badges
Digital Open Badges can be shared across the web unlike digital badges. The evidence of these badges is embedded in
the badge and anybody can throw a badge validation check to ascertain the authenticity of that badge.
An Open Digital Badge has all of the following information embedded in it for the viewer to access:
 Who issued the badge
 Criteria that were met to earn the badge
 Links to the task performed i.e. the evidence
Digital open badges are universal and easily visible credential of a person's skill-set. They are specific to a
skill/achievement unlike degrees and are an increasingly popular way for universities to acknowledge student's
learning desire and achievement. Digital Open Badges are becoming a way to recognize learning, achievement and
skills.
Soon, it will be history when people need to carry files and folders to represent their skills. An electronic
accreditation accessible from anywhere on the globe will make the learning process more competitive making all
skills and achievements comparable on a global scale.
Open Badges is basically a project initiated by Mozilla with a vision of encouraging lifelong learning process. As a
result, helping people of all ages learn and display 21st
century skills and explore new career and educational
opportunities. The purpose and aim of Open Badges is the recognition of skills and achievements that happens
outside of school.

5. Lifelong Learning with Digital Open Badges
Learning can happen anywhere – in a classroom, in an
organization, on a learning portal or on a gaming site.
Open Badges recognizes all kinds of skills required which
will prove beneficial in understanding the innermost
skills and exploring the new opportunities.
Digital Open Badges acknowledge a person's
achievement and skill and at the same time encourages
the life-long learning process.
Tom’s father is a renowned lawyer. Just like his father Tom will also pursue law to become a
famous lawyer. But Tom has an avid interest in writing. As part of school curriculum he
participated in an emerging Journalist competition. The competition recognized his
participation by announcing him as the first place winner and awarding the badge for his skill.
Tom proudly displayed the Open Badge on his public profile which turned out to be a turning
point in his career. He was approached by a leading newspaper which was interested in
sponsoring Tom’s education fees if he applies for Journalism courses. It was this moment when
Tom recognized his innermost skill which helped him define his career path.
How Open Badges help in recognizing skills

6. Understanding a Digital Open Badge System.
As Mozilla outlines, an open badging system must have:
(i) Issuer
(ii) Backpack
(iii) Displayer
Mozilla has outlined the Open Badging framework which is called Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI). To make a
standard Open Badge system it has to be OBI compliant, which means the system has to follow the framework
guidelines.
Source: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges
The Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure (OBI)
provides the technical “plumbing” to support an
Open Badges ecosystem. It includes a metadata
specification (the standard which makes badges
interoperable), the initial framework for badge
repositories, the Mozilla Backpack, and a set of
application programming interfaces (APIs)
enabling portability and verification of badges.
The OBI is designed to be an open standards
framework that allows badge systems to break
out of their siloed environments and work
together to benefit learners.

7. Issuer
Earner
Issuer
[Schools, Institutes, Organizations, Job Training,
Gaming sites, e-learning]
An ISSUER is one who issues badges as the recognition of any
skill or accomplishment.
Badge

8. Backpack
Group badges
Set Privacy
Share
Backpack
A Backpack is the central repository system where the badges
are stored when user claims the badges. From the Backpack,
user can manage the badges, group them, set privacy level and
share it on various displayer sites.

9. Backpack
Your website
Social
networking
sites
Job Portals
Displayer
Displayer
Displayer is any site where the badge is being displayed. If you want
the users to display their badges on your site as well, you can also
become a displayer. It can be multiple sites. The backpack is used to
share the badges on various displayers.

10. How to Implement
Open Badge System

11. Issuer would be a plugin for your codebase that will implement following –
o Allocation of badges (assuming one at a time) by a role ‘issuer’
o Sending email to earner on each badge assignment
o Claiming the badge by the earner on login into www.yourwebsite.com
Issuer plugin would also allow integration with Mozilla backpack to make the plugin useful for the broader
Code base & Mozilla Openbadges community as mentioned here -
https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/wiki/Issuer-API
This would allow earners to claim the badge directly into Mozilla backpack.
“Issuer”
1
“Back
Pack”
2
“Displayer”
3
This plugin for your codebase would implement a displayer to the backpack. This will be a javascript
widget that for an email address as an input would return a set of badges the user has received on
www.yourwebsite.com. This plugin would be flexible to work with any backpack – making it useful for
Mozilla OpenBadges community users as well who want to show their Mozilla OpenBadges Backpack into
the codebase system.
Option 1: Mozilla Backpack
Option 2: Local instance of
Mozilla Backpack
Option 3: Custom Backpack
Backpack can be
implemented in
3 different ways.

12. Option 1:
In this option, you use Mozilla backpack and implement your own issuer/displayer as a plugin for your codebase.
Each user would have to sign up using Mozilla Persona when claiming the badge.
Ideally SSO would be handled automatically when using plugin for the codebase.
For displayer, Mozilla Displayer API can be used to embed javascript widget.
This the most commonly used option for OpenBadging implementation by most of the websites.
Option 2:
Install Mozilla’ OpenBadges backpack code (https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/) in NodeJS environment and
then write a plugin for your codebase to communicate with this backpack.
• Bypass Mozilla Persona signup and implement single sign on with login.yourwebsite.com. Possibly here,
https://github.com/mozilla/openbadges/blob/development/lib/environments/local-dist.js
• Implement branding on the OpenBadges site. Whether this can be implemented in a plugin remains an open
question.
Local instance of

13. Option 3:
A custom backpack will be written as the plugin for your codebase. This would have following functions :-
• Stores the badges in the database when the earner claims it. Optionally allows to push to backpack.
• Prior to storing the badge, it should be baked. This means the metadata of the badge assertion must be embedded
in the PNG badge so that it remains OBI compliant.
• Users should be able to manage their badges, group them and change privacy setting - private/public.
• Badge validation API.
The backpack plugin would also implement the Displayer API.
Custom Backpack

14. Implementation Team
An ideal implementation team that will help you achieve your desired badge system will
consist of various roles.

15. Out of the Box Solution
 Drupal module to for creating/issuing/managing/displaying badges -- http://drupal.org/project/OpenBadging
 Issuing app for Django -- https://github.com/lmorchard/django-badger
 A pyramid (python) app for issuing your own Open Badges -- https://github.com/ralphbean/tahrir
 Drupal module for managing/issuing badges -- http://drupal.org/project/user_badges
 Rails Engine for issuing -- https://github.com/PRX/badges_engine

16. For Any Query or Installation of Open Badges,
Contact:
Priyanka Jhamnani
Sr. Drupal Consultant/Manager
For Any Query or Installation of Open
Badges, Contact:
Priyanka Jhamnani
Sr. Drupal Consultant/Manager
Email: priyanka@ebizontek.com
Skype: priyanka.jhamnani
Drupal.org
id:
http://drupal.org/node/1962434
Website: http://ebizontek.com