Open Badges
Open Badges is an open technical standard for digital badges, maintained by 1EdTech, which defines a machine-readable structure so that a badge issued by one organisation can be read and checked by software written by another.
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A standard, not a product
Open Badges is a specification. It describes how the data behind a digital badge should be structured: what the award is called, who issued it, what the criteria were, who earned it, and how the whole thing can be checked.
It is maintained by 1EdTech and began at Mozilla in 2011. Nobody sells Open Badges; organisations issue badges that conform to it, using software that implements it.
What it is for
Interoperability, and only interoperability. The problem it solves is that without a shared structure, every issuer's badge is a private arrangement: a learner holding badges from six providers holds six things that work in six places and nowhere else.
A conforming badge can be read by software written by someone who has never heard of the issuer. That makes badges collectable in a wallet, displayable in a system the issuer does not control, and checkable by a third party's tooling. That is the whole ambition, and it is a good one.
It is also the test of whether you need it. If nothing outside your organisation has to read your badges programmatically, the standard is solving a problem you do not have.
Version 3.0, briefly
The current version rebuilt a badge as a verifiable credential on the W3C data model. The badge itself did not change: same image, same achievement, same criteria, same issuer. What changed is the container it travels in and the way somebody checks it.
For most issuers that is a change in plumbing rather than a change in what their learners can do. Open Badges 3.0 explained for issuers covers what actually changed, what it buys you, and what moving costs. One thing worth stating here because it circulates so widely: the standard has no blockchain requirement, and never had one.
Where this platform stands
Credentials issued through Certifications.ng are not Open Badges. Badges here carry a cryptographic signature and a permanent verification page of their own, which answers the question a human verifier asks, but they do not conform to the 1EdTech specification and will not be read by badge wallets or other systems expecting it.
That matters if your accreditation, funder, or partner requires the standard by name, and it is worth establishing before rather than after a decision. If it does, the honest answer is that you need a platform built on it. How we compare with Credly says the same thing above its comparison table, for the same reason.
Related terms
- Digital badge
A digital badge is a credential presented as a shareable image, with a linked record behind it that says who earned it, what for, and who issued it.
- Verifiable credential
A verifiable credential is a digital credential that carries its own cryptographic proof, so its authenticity can be confirmed from the credential itself rather than by contacting whoever issued it.
- Digital credential
A digital credential is a claim about a person, such as a qualification, a skill, a membership, or an attendance, issued in a form that can be checked electronically rather than taken on trust.