The backbone of Digital Identity is the ability to employ a single, private, secure identity system as the key to enter any number of applications and environments you might have access to. In broader strokes however, especially in education, it can encompasses the ownership (by the learner) of the learning experience and the authority to broker the data, transcripts, credentials, etc, arising from that experience.
Opportunity Statement
As every individual’s learning experience is increasingly digital, bridging across formal and informal activities hosted by multiple institutions and organizations, Digital Identity venture opportunities arise for products and services which support the individual’s objectives as well as help them to seamlessly negotiate those objectives with external organizations and stakeholders.
Prediction Source(s)
NMC – 2012 K-12 Horizon Report
This is a great ideal and I wonder how far things will progress with seamlessness and transparency of an individual’s learning across different spaces and providers. At a national level where there are qualifications frameworks, it’s possible to have a single ID for each student and for that to travel across providers, thereby keeping a centralised record. I guess that is for formal learning where naational qualifications/certifications are involved. Otherwise, in informal learning, such as that done on open platforms like MOOCs, I wonder how a single identity can be achieved. And corporate/employee identify is different again. As we are all lifelong learners, it will be interesting to see how a ‘single sign on” will emerge for all the types of activities and contexts an individual will experience.
The other side of the coin is the need of organisations to have students verify their digital identity.
This is not unique to education, it’s part and parcel of today’s e-commerce.