Re: Issuer-specific achievements

Thanks for the continuation. This is definitely worth a timely discussion
to queue up a good joint CLR/OB workgroup meeting this Thursday. I've also
added comments here:
https://github.com/IMSGlobal/openbadges-specification/issues/428

credential.type and credentialSubject.achievement.id are indeed two
different properties within a credential where we might do work that
enables us to determine if a credential is fit for purpose and issued by
the expected issuer. I often find value in expressing the intent of a
credential issuer in plain human language to determine where within a
JSON-LD structure the expected value should be encoded.

In this case, I see this as a case of "I want to issue a Open Badge
(Credential type) to Alice to recognize her achievement of Bachelor's of
Science-as-defined-by-me (achievement id and metadata)."

Whereas you might see this as "I want to issue a Open Badge, Bachelor's of
Science-as-defined-by-? (credential type) to Alice to recognize her
achievement of her degree. I will provide additional metadata about the
achievement within the credential."

In your example, the fundamental model of Open Badges would be different
for 3.0 than it was for 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0, as far as I can tell. It would
be more like "There is some organization, whoever is first perhaps, who
defines a type of 'Bachelor's of Science', and then many institutions issue
a credential of that type, and each award would contain whatever criteria
and metadata that they consider specific to their interpretation of that
concept. Correct me if I got your idea wrong.

Looking at another example of a badge that is more concretely tied to one
specific organization, consider the Boy Scouts of America's "Eagle Scout"
badge. How far have you thought through how a badge like this would work?
Unlike the generic concept of a "Bachelor's Degree", the BSA authors the
concept of "Eagle Scout" with the intent that only their own organization
is ever permitted to award this badge. Have you thought of a particular
mechanism that the BSA would use to encode this understanding into a
credential so that verifiers and wallets could determine and display
whether a particular award was created by the expected organization? In my
eye this capability has been core to Open Badges since 1.0 and I don't
expect the workgroup to be willing to abandon it as a requirement for
conformant badge display.

Nate


On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 3:08 PM Dmitri Zagidulin <dzagidulin@gmail.com>
wrote:

> (Switching this over to a new thread, since this is out of scope for the
> JFF plugfest.)
>
> Nate, I think there may be a mis-understanding here.
>
> > If we didn't have this default restriction, Harvard University might
> define a particular achievement for a Bachelor's Degree in Computer
> Science, and we wouldn't be able to differentiate between the real deal
> Harvard degree and impersonations.
>
> Not at all - the value here is a *tuple* of Bachelors Degree, and the
> issuer (Harvard). With the achievement.id mechanism, you're trying to
> squish those two properties (achievement type, and issuer) into one (the
> id).
>
>
> On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 5:31 PM Nate Otto <nate@ottonomy.net> wrote:
>
>> @Dmitri, thanks for replying with your thoughts.
>>
>> > I want to suggest that -- the achievement.id field is a non-idiomatic
>> way of fulfilling that usecase. achievement.type would make a lot more
>> sense, and would match the usage in the general Verifiable Credentials
>> community.
>>
>> I think you haven't quite grasped the use case for "Does the user have
>> credential X?", for example for a credential certifying a user as being
>> qualified to use a specific 3D printer in a specific maker space.
>>
>> The scenario here is not "holder, please present any VCs that may be
>> related to 3DPrinterAuthorization from any issuer", it is "holder, can you
>> present that you hold the specific achievement issued by this specific
>> organization that claims you have met the criteria of its specific training
>> program for using this specific 3D printer?".
>>
>> In Open Badges, a particular Defined Achievement has criteria and
>> assessment that are particular to the creator. Other issuers are not
>> permitted to issue valid credentials that are created by a particular
>> achievement creator; this is pretty core to how Open Badges works. If we
>> didn't have this default restriction, Harvard University might define a
>> particular achievement for a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, and we
>> wouldn't be able to differentiate between the real deal Harvard degree and
>> impersonations. Open Badges has its mechanisms for doing this based on
>> achievement.id and achievement.issuer/creator, and the workgroup will
>> need to ensure that verification of this core feature still works
>> efficiently under 3.0. It is use case #1 for Open Badges, so it's critical
>> to deliver.
>>
>> Open Badges 3.0 spec introduces a separate set of use cases (not "defined
>> achievement") that correspond to something more akin to what you have
>> paraphrased, "holder, please present any VCs that may be related to
>> 3DPrinterAuthorization from any issuer", under the heading of "skills".
>> That would be to ask for any VC that claims a user holds a particular
>> skill, as recognized by any issuer, you would ask "holder, please present
>> any VCs that claim that you hold skill 'htttps://
>> sharableskills.example.org/skills/3DPrintingAdvanced'." I expect the
>> approach for this will depend on the "result.alignment.targetUrl" but am
>> open to suggestions for alternate approaches. It's the critical 2 week
>> period right now to deliver on this use case, so discussion
>> <https://github.com/IMSGlobal/openbadges-specification/issues/339> is
>> very welcome.
>>
>> If it's your suggestion that IMS/1EdTech implement a significantly
>> different mechanism in OB 3.0 for serving the most important use case in
>> Open Badges than was used in 2.0, that's something that should be brought
>> to the attention of the chairs of that workgroup immediately so that they
>> can schedule appropriate time to address it before candidate final vote and
>> release.
>>
>> Nate
>>
>