[MINUTES] W3C CCG Verifiable Credentials for Education Task Force Call - 2021-11-22

Thanks to Heather Vescent for scribing this week! The minutes
for this week's Verifiable Credentials for Education Task Force telecon are now available:

https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/2021-11-22-vc-education 

Full text of the discussion follows for W3C archival purposes.
Audio from the meeting is available as well (link provided below).

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Verifiable Credentials for Education Task Force Telecon Minutes for 2021-11-22

Agenda:
  https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vc-edu/2021Nov/0041.html
Topics:
  1. Introductions
  2. Announcements & Reminders
  3. VC-EDU Co-Chair Candidates
Organizer:
  Kerri Lemoie
Scribe:
  Heather Vescent
Present:
  Stuart Freeman, Kerri Lemoie, Uli Gallersdörfer, Ed Comer, Simone 
  Ravaoli, Sharon Leu, Marty Reed, Colin (LEF), Sheryl, Deb 
  Everhart, Dmitri Zagidulin, John Kuo, Kayode Ezike, Heather 
  Vescent, Matt Lisle, Phil Barker, David Ward, Frank Cicio, 
  Taylor, Matthias Gottlieb, Philipp (MIT)
Audio:
  https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/2021-11-22/audio.ogg

Kerri Lemoie: https://www.w3.org/community/credentials/join
Kerri Lemoie: https://www.w3.org/accounts/request
Kerri Lemoie: https://www.w3.org/community/about/agreements/cla/
Kerri Lemoie: https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/
Heather Vescent is scribing.
Heather Vescent is scribing.

Topic: Introductions

Topic: Announcements & Reminders

Kerri Lemoie:  No meeting next week. On Dec 7, VC-EDU is going to 
  be featured on the main CCG call.
  ... want to include anything? Get in touch with Kerri.

Topic: VC-EDU Co-Chair Candidates

Kerri Lemoie:  Going to meet the candidates. We have 2 open 
  co-chair positions and 4 candidates.
  ... First up, Frank.
Frank Cicio: founding a company to solve the technology skills 
  gap the past 10 years. It's important to solve these challenges 
  with technology, but there is more... content, ecosystems, 
  partners, many dimensions of importance and use cases.
  ... taxonomy is core between the learning institutions and the 
  learner to create an environment where everyone can speak to the 
  same language. I have volunteered a lot of time around addressing 
  this. For example, in cybersecurity, working with the NICE 
  framework. I have co-chaired the taxonomy group focused on 
  leveraging the NICE framework to apply to the private sector, 
  previously created for public sector.  To extend the government 
  framework to the private sector.
  ...involved in OSN, national student clearing house, involved 
  in governance and policy work groups for OSN and IEEE.
  ...thought that I could add some value here.
Next Simone Ravaioli.
Simone Ravaioli: work for digitary, in credentials. Based in 
  europe but work over the world. Have always contributed to 
  standards. My core focus is that this is a vibrant and diverse 
  ecosystem and keep the work connected to work being done 
  elsewhere. To get to an adoption stage/interoperability, you have 
  to recogonize the work of others and work together.
  ...taking advantage of work elsewhere, other specs. In VCs 
  there is a web of work. Recpgpnize the objective is adoption. I 
  would like to see the standards around learner records get into 
  the mainstream.
  ...what's happening outside of VC-EDU, in Canada, new spec 
  around new credentials. In Europe, the SEN, is hosting a plenary 
  session to kick off tech work from 10 years ago. I want to bring 
  these connections into this work group to solve the problems on a 
  global level.
Next: Dmitri
Dmitri Zagidulin:  Software eng in VC-EDU. Got involved working 
  with Kim Hamilton Duffy. Helped her draw up the architecture for 
  MIT learner credential wallet.
  ...I bring low level implemention, but also a high level 
  strategic overview. I have built a lot of libraries the 
  credentials are using, mini-did resolvers, did-key, did-web, 
  member of the did working group.
  ...the other focus is about reaching out and building bridges 
  between other groups. Active in CCG, active in DIF, secure data 
  storage, openid foundation, IETF, IEEE and similar groups.
  ...my day to day work, involves a lot of listening and 
  understanding and hands on implementation. I've enjoyed this 
  group and want to help.
Next: Colin
Colin (LEF): My career as a teacher and tech integrator. Started 
  getting involved with Learning Economy a couple years ago. Out of 
  curiosity, got involved in the digital world for education, open 
  badges, mozilla. Tried to build badges for my 1st grade students.
  ...have been secretary of the IEEE and OSN to facilitate. Want 
  to contribute back to this community and want to continue to 
  partner with this community to bridge the gap between the silos 
  in this space.
  ...this is a great middle ground to partner with these 
  communities. To bring implementation and practical use cases to 
  our learners. Thank you.
Kerri Lemoie: 
  https://docs.google.com/document/d/11I96C6QMzx9Yv0mvM3hAnc3jB5ER69qmzQTeY1a8M8s/edit
Frank: great question, the biggest challenge is mapping 
  competencies to skills and courses. Biggest challenge to post 
  secondary education. The biggest issue we saw, was the schools to 
  translate my course into compentecy.  Create a simple way to do 
  this, and go to the faculty. And use ML to simplify this. 
  Triangulate three course sources. The ONET and NICE frameworks, 
  and industry has a handle on taxonomy, the high schools have a 
  good handle. The combination of the high school market and the 
  enterprise market, we can come up with a way for the secondary 
  market understand what skills they have that map to their courses 
  and populate these open frameworks to finetune over time.
Simone Ravaoli:  VCs is a fit for current web 3.0 circumstance. 
  The key challenge is to avoid leaving anyone behind. VCs need to 
  be able to work with what is available today. Open badges have 
  started on this journey. But when we build the future of VCs, we 
  anchor and build the bridge with technologies from a different 
  era. The other piece is, introducing verifiable layer that 
  doesn't compromise user experience.
Dmitri Zagidulin:  There are a lot of technical challenges in the 
  EDU space, key recovery, tech interop, the biggest challenge we 
  (unfortunately) face is social. The question of trust, trust 
  frameworks that verify the verifiers. The challenge is interop on 
  the strategy level, coalition building. We agree on the envelope, 
  but what goes inside the envelope crosses many boundaries - to 
  make sure we recogonize each others credentials.
Colin: It's 2 things: alignment and agreement from institutions 
  is challenging and adoption. Getting universities and schools to 
  agree on core language. The other part is adoption and making 
  sure the EDU tag doesn't fall into a churn and burn of new 
  idea/innovation/pilot and three years later its gone. For the EDU 
  world to play with the VC world, it needs to happen in the same 
  pace.
Marty Reed:  A lot of the credential work in the education system 
  is converging here. How do you think about the intersection of 
  the other standards body work.
  ...tons of standards bodies doing a lot of work. and they seem 
  to be intersecting in the education world. How do we promote or 
  drive that forward.
Frank: From a tech perspective, data store, as long as we can 
  access and share data. Through open APIs or other technical, 
  whether you are allowed to share via regulations. What's the use 
  case between schools and employers. As long as the data can be 
  shared. An enterprise is not hung up on the standards. Schools 
  are different. From a standards perspective, some orgs have a 
  lead, e.g. IMS Global, IEEE, etc. I would take the view of, who 
  is leading these standard initative, what does it mean and how 
  does it impact the use cases at the end of the day. It's about 
  adoption. What is the impact on adoption, and work to supporting 
  that.
Simone Ravaoli:  My technical answer, interop is a human thing. 
  it's true that other standards orgs are working on similar stuff, 
  there is a shared interest. Engage outside the worlds borders, 
  and have a human conversation. It's not necessarily a technical 
  challenge, but you need to prove the interop is working, e.g. 
  Anil John's interop work. Doing it the plugfest way. But the 
  incentives might be a little different. I'm confident there will 
  be a way.
Dmitri Zagidulin:  This is a great question. I strongly believe, 
  these specifications and tech stacks can converge and this VC-EDU 
  taskforce should play a role in this. We should have frequent 
  cross-community presentations. The human social element and the 
  tech side can converge and VC-EDU can play a role.
Colin: feel spoiled to hear others answers first and nod along. 
  That's what's great about this community. The social 
  infrastructure to get folks to do business together. We need 
  people to continue to develop and adopt. We need to collaborate 
  across silos and demonstrate interop and use cases that build the 
  trust. And then they start using it and we make progress that 
  way.
Sharon Leu:  My question is a follow-up to Heather's about 
  important priorities in edu and credentialing. Growing diversity 
  of credential types, especially issuers (e.g. institutional 
  credential issues as a use case), from your perspective, what are 
  the technical priorities this taskforce to have to make the 
  diversity of credentials to be *used*.
Frank: I believe there are two views: the credentials themselves. 
  We have to work with the credential issuers. There needs to be 
  some level of taxonomy in the credential themself. The second 
  view on how it's used, once you have the granularity, you can use 
  it in a skills marketplace. You have a repository of data in 
  order to address the skills gap.
Simone Ravaoli:  To make credentials used, they have to behave, 
  usable and useful at the same time. Maybe one challenge looking 
  at how do we resolve identity of in a VC what is the governance 
  in how we identify legit issuers. It's opening up to other actors 
  that are providing good education. The flexibility in using a 
  did, what else could be used? Or how could we assign dids?
<sharon_leu> Frank, are you suggesting as a technical priority, 
  this task force should expand its scope beyond the existing VC to 
  take a point of view on letter standards?
<frank_cicio> Sharon , sorry letter standards?
Dmitri Zagidulin:  On the technical level, the short term 
  challenge to solve as a group: building that issuer registry. If 
  we don't have a list of educational issues, we can't do anything 
  else and we fragment. 1. building that registry, which means 
  agreeing on the governance of who gets to go on that list. 2. is 
  wallets. If we don't have wallets, we can't have these student 
  centric credentials... or it's just as a business as usual way we 
  have always done. By wallets, we need mobile wallets, and in 
  browser web app wallets to interoperate. This is the second 
  technical challenge. Which is why I dove into both projects. #3, 
  is for us to reconcile the tension between small credentials and 
  big bundles of credentials. How do we interlink credentials. We 
  need to support both individual small credentials (QR code, 
  selective disclosure) but we also need to handle large bundles 
  like your entire transcribe to date. #4 we need to agree on 
  common syntax for display/view component. The wallets currently 
  don't agree and you don't know how your credentials are going to 
  be displayed. I think we can do better, templated.
Colin: Dmitri that was awesome. So glad all the candidates are in 
  this community. To me, one of the greatest technical challenges, 
  is to get a small interoperable use case across systems, to iron 
  out these (concerns) on a smaller scale. Finding a small use case 
  or set of users to start making this trust triangle is a good 
  starting point.
<deb_everhart> +q
Deb Everhart:  General question, first thank you to all who has 
  stepped forward. There's a lot here about use cases, ecosystems, 
  and technical. Could you each briefly comment on the balance 
  between these? and your role in co-chairing this group?
Colin: the technical spec, what from a credential is going into a 
  wallet and shared btwn institutions.
Dmitri Zagidulin:  The balance btwn tech and social, the key for 
  us, plugfest and interop suites specifically. I do look to this 
  group to set a good example, among other edu bodies.
Simone Ravaoli:  My contribution on the ecosystem side, to bring 
  this into the adoption space.
Frank: schools have a lot of validation to reg data, transcripts. 
  The focus needs to be on the use case and the focus of this task 
  force's work. Needs to be use case driven and the tech will 
  follow.
Kerri Lemoie:  I really appreciate everyone stepping up to offer 
  to do the work. Going to explain how the voting will work.
  ...sharing the screen. We are going to use rank choice voting. 
  Using OpaVote platform. Kerri will send the link out on the 
  VC-EDU mailing list. (Going over the participation requirements.)
<frank_cicio> Sharon, expanded scope may be necessary if it 
  supports the Workgroups mission and charter
  ...the candidates and their submissions are linked.
  ...lastly since we are using ranked choice voting. It works so 
  that there is only one vote per person.
<sharon_leu> @frank, I was referring to the VC spec.
  ...it ends December 5, at 11:59 pm EAST COAST TIME
Kerri Lemoie: https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vc-edu/
<frank_cicio> Sharon, ok ill revert on this specifically ty
<deb_everhart> thank you everyone!
<sharon_leu> thanks!
<philipp_(mit)> Thanks!

Received on Monday, 22 November 2021 19:27:28 UTC