Open Badges Extensions

Extensions are community developed contributions to the Open Badges Specification. Any issuer may define and publish them to include new types of metadata in badges. Any other issuer may use the same extensions to publish similar information in a mutually recognizable way.

Open Badges Community Extensions (below)

Submit your published extensions to this page with a pull request on GitHub, following the existing format of the page.

Note: Extension authors are not required to host extensions on this page in order for them to be valid. Extension authors may publish descriptions, context and/or schema files required for a new extension on any publicly-accessible location, however that location should provide stable hosting for many years, because extended badges will lose their meaning if these resources become inaccessible.

Extension Example:

Example Extension Name

This is a definition of an example extension. If it were a real extension, it would describe the purpose of adding it to a badge object. If you follow the link #ExampleExtension, you’ll get to this paragraph. This is the IRI (Internationalized Resource Identifier) to use for implementations of this extension, included below as the compact IRI extension:ExampleExtension. See the context and schema files that form the machine-readable core of this extension.

Extendable Badge Objects: Assertion, BadgeClass, Issuer

Example implementation:

{ 
  "extension:ExampleExtension": {
    "@context":"https://openbadgespec.org/extensions/exampleExtension/context.json",
    "type": ["Extension", "extensions:ExampleExtension"],
    "exampleProperty": "I'm a property, short and sweet."
  }
}

Community Extensions:

Apply Link

Author: Kerri Lemoie

The apply link provides a url that allows potential badge earners to apply for an opportunty as specified by the badge issuer.

Extendable Badge Objects: BadgeClass

Example implementation:

{ 
  "extensions:ApplyLink": {
    "@context":"https://openbadgespec.org/extensions/applyLinkExtension/context.json",
    "type": ["Extension", "extensions:ApplyLink"],
    "url": "http://website.com/apply"
  }
}

Endorsement

Author: Nate Otto

Any organization that is set up to issue badges may provide endorsements of other issuers’ badge objects (Assertion, Badge Class or Issuer). For example, a school district may issue an endorsement to indicate approval of a specific Badge Class corresponding to professional development credits acceptable by the district. See the Badge Alliance Endorsement Working Group framework paper for background.

Endorsement of a Badge Class serves to publicly acknowledge the value of a badge as designed, assessed, and issued by a badge issuer. Endorsements of an Issuer are presumed to apply to all Badge Classes and Assertions created by that Issuer. See the context and schema for endorsement.

Extendable Badge Objects: Assertion, BadgeClass, Issuer

This extension is a little more involved in that it requires a whole Badge Class to be created for each issuer who wants to use it. From there, the extension itself must be added to an Assertion whose recipient identity is the IRI (URL) of the endorsed Badge Object. Endorsers may use one Badge Class for all their endorsements, or they may create multiple badge classes to provide different types of endorsement. Consumers should consider both the Badge Class’s description field as well as the Assertion’s Endorsement extension’s description property. The extension poses the option to embed the entire endorsed object so questions of intent could be resolved in case the hosted endorsed object is changed by its issuer.

Example implementation:

BadgeClass (each endorsing issuer must define a BadgeClass to use for endorsement):

{
  "@context": "https://w3id.org/openbadges/v1",
  "id": "http://endorser.org/endorsementclass1",
  "type": "BadgeClass",
  "name": "Endorsement Badge",
  "description": "Endorser's badge of support. Badges receiving this have been vetted by the Endorser.",
  "image": "http://endorser.org/endorsementimage.png",
  "criteria": "http://endorser.org/what-it-takes",
  "issuer": "http://endorser.org/issuer1"
}

Assertion (full copy of endorsed object elided):

{ 
  "@context": "https://w3id.org/openbadges/v1",
  "id": "http://endorser.org/endorsement124",
  "type": "Assertion",
  "recipient": {
    "identity": "http://anotherissuer.org/badgeclass5",
    "type": "@id",
    "hashed": false 
  },
  "badge": "http://endorser.org/endorsementclass1",
  "extensions:Endorsement": {
    "@context":"https://w3id.org/openbadges/extensions/endorsement/context.json",
    "type": ["Extension", "extensions:Endorsement"],
    "description": "This badge is truly a work of art, and meaningful for its earners besides.",
    "endorsedObject": {
        "**": "*** Full copy of endorsed object ***"
    }
  },
  "issuedOn": "2015-05-20"
}

Location

Authors: Doug Belshaw and Kerri Lemoie

An extension allowing for the addition of the geographic coordinates associated with a badge object. For example, geolocation could represent where a Badge Class is available, where a badge was earned or the location of an issuer. The required description property allows implementers to be more specific about the reason location is included. The extended value takes

Extendable Badge Objects: Assertion, BadgeClass, Issuer

Example implementation:

{ 
  ...
  "schema:location": {
    "@context": "https://openbadgespec.org/extensions/geoCoordinatesExtension/context.json",
    "type": ["Extension", "extensions:GeoCoordinates", "schema:Place"],
    "name": "Stadium of Light, Sunderland",
    "description": "A foodball stadium in Sunderland, England that is home to Sunderland A.F.C.",
    "geo": {
      "latitude": 54.914440,
      "longitude": -1.387721
    }
  }
}

Accessibility

An extension allowing for the addition of the content for people with disabilities.

Extendable Badge Objects: Assertion, BadgeClass, Issuer

Example implementation:

{
    "name": "Awesome Robotics Badge",
    "description": "For doing awesome things with robots that people think is pretty great.",
    "image": "http://openbadges.it/logo.png",
    "criteria": "https://example.org/robotics-badge.html",
    "tags": [
        "robots",
        "awesome"
    ],
    "issuer": "https://example.org/badge/issuer.json",
  "extensions:Accessibility": {
    "@context":"https://w3id.org/openbadges/extensions/accessibility/context.json",
    "type": ["Extension", "extensions:Accessibility"],
    "accessibilityAPI": "ARIA",
    "accessibilityControl": ["fullKeyboardControl","fullMouseControl","fullTouchControl"],
    "accessibilityFeature": "audioDescription",
    "accessibilityHazard": "noFlashingHazard",
    "url": "http://exampleaccessiblecontent.org/"
  }
}

Original Creator

Author: Antti Koskinen

This extension provides a way to track the origin of a badge when one organisation creates it for another.

For example, presume we have organisations X, Y and Z. A badge is created by X and they grant Y and Z the right to issue it. IssuerClass of X is stored as the OriginalCreator in the BadgeClass and either Y or Z becomes the issuer.

Extendable Badge Objects: BadgeClass

Example implementation:

{ 
  "extensions:OriginalCreator": {
    "@context":"https://openbadgespec.org/extensions/originalCreatorExtension/context.json",
    "type": ["Extension", "extensions:OriginalCreator"],
    "url": "https://example.org/creator-organisation.json"
  }
}

xAPI Integration

An exploratory prototype draft xAPI vocabulary has been defined so that Open Badges will soon be referencable from Experience API activity streams. See xAPI Open Badges documentation for details.