Verify badges using BadgeCheck.io

[#1]

Open Badges are different from (flat) digital stickers in that they contain immediately verifiable information. When a badge is awarded, metadata about the badge, recipient and issuer are baked into the award. This makes Open Badges very hard to fake, forge or copy. For example, a badge may be shared with a hiring committee who could then immediately verify the badge issuer, recipient, date of award and other information about the award. This prevents an actual recipient from giving their badge to a friend who might feign that they earned the badge themselves. With Badgr, you can share a badge from your backpack and choose to include the recipient identifier (typically an email address), so that the badge consumer can not only verify the nature of the award but also to whom it was awarded. BadgeCheck.io can be used to verify badges and badge recipients. Badge verification is an all-or-nothing process. All data contained within the badge must be verified for it to be considered a valid Open Badge. This includes information about the issuer, badge award and recipient. If one of the data points can't be verified, then the badge is considered invalid even if some of the information is correct. Please note that some verification results may be of a technical nature. See: Sharing badges from Badgr.

Badge awards

1. Open Badges are immediately verifiable by the earner or consumer.
2. You can verify a badge from your Badgr Backpack in a number of ways.
3. From the badge share URL.

1. From the HTML tab with the Card or Badge view.

1. Anywhere else you see the Verify badge button.

Entering information for BadgeCheck verification

Badge consumers are people who have an interest in your achievement and with whom you may choose to share your badge, such as college admissions, human resources or program educators. Badge consumers may wish to verify a badge that is shared with them. Badges can be verified through BadgeCheck either by selecting Verify independently from the verification page or by manually entering the badge information into the form on BadgeCheck.io.

1. When the Verify independently button is selected, a URL containing a link to the badge information and verification engine will open in a new window with some of the information pre-populated.
2. In most cases, the badge share URL will pre-populate in the Badge object reference field. The Badge share URL or JSON can also be manually entered into this field for verification.

3. Alternatively, you may wish to upload your badge image, complete with meta-data, to the verification engine. 4. You may wish to add additional information, such as the recipient identifier.

• In most cases, this will be the email address of the badge earner
• Identifiers may also be a telephone number, URL or JSON-LD ID

5. Select the Add another button for each additional identifier you wish to check. You may add as many recipient identifiers as you like and the verification tool will determine which identifier is associated with the badge (typically only one).

6. After you've entered all the necessary information, select the Verify button.

Results

There's a lot of information available to you on the results screen. Generally, if all the data, including recipient information, is verified, you'll get a report containing a green checkmark stating the information is true.

If not, you'll receive a report stating the information is false, with unverified data highlighted in red.

Common verification failures

Could not find Open Badges metadata — This occurs when the badge metadata hasn't been included with the badge image. Acceptable image formats include PNG and SVG file types only. In many cases, it's possible to obtain a PNG or SVG file with metadata.

{{message.name }}:{{ message.result }} — This occurs for Mozilla badges awarded from a Mozilla issuer. Mozilla has shut down their issuer systems and issuers from that system can no longer be validated, which results in a verification failure (even if the award and recipient information are correct).