Multiligual Credentials

Hello All,

At the November 18, VC-EDU call, we discussed approaches to multilingual credentials (transcription and audio available through this tool: https://w3c-ccg.github.io/meetings/scribe-tool/).

I believe this is an important topic especially for education related credentials.

I’d like to kick-off a discussion on this thread and consider a follow-up discussion at VC-EDU again and/or CCG soon. Together we can consider pragmatic approaches that will help to make the credentials as useable and understandable as possible.

Primarily we discussed two ways that I’m aware of that we could issue credentials in multiple languages.

W3C VCDM approach: https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/#example-example-dual-language-credential

The angle of this approach is to provide translations within the properties themselves.

1EdTech Open Badges 3.0 & Comprehensive Learner Record V2: https://gist.github.com/ottonomy/12bd1e1f5510d3f49d966b1991f1e6c8 (draft gist provided by Nate Otto – thanks)

This approach specifies creating related achievements that could be in different languages using:

  *   related (https://www.imsglobal.org/spec/ob/v3p0#org.1edtech.ob.v3p0.related.class)
  *   with a languageCode: (https://www.imsglobal.org/spec/ob/v3p0#org.1edtech.ob.v3p0.derived.languagecode.class)

It’s worth noting this approach has been used by the 1EdTech specs prior to the more current versions that are aligned to VCs and that they could be open to changing this in a subsequent version.

Also worth noting that the current Open Badges 3.0 and CLR v2 (presumably since they are very similar) schemas will not allow for the VCDM method because the properties where you would likely apply this are expected to be strings versus arrays or objects. So, any software verifying against the schemas will return an error if say, both the VCDM and the 1EdTech angles to multilingual credentials are used simultaneously.

Would love to hear from you about it.

Best,

K.


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Kerri Lemoie, PhD
Director – MIT, Digital Credentials Consortium
https://digitalcredentials.mit.edu
she/her

The DCC is advancing the use and understanding of portable, verifiable digital credentials in higher education through open source technology development and leadership, research, and advocacy.

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