Academic Credentials in the Digital Age

Background

The way we issue and manage academic credentials has been unchanged while the way we learn has been drastically transformed in the digital era.

There are various forms of learning with a new focus on lifelong learning, MOOCs, continues professional and workplace training have gained traction along side traditional university degrees.

For this purpose a consotrium of international universities has been formed to research new possibilities to issue and verify academic credentials. Currently concepts utilising a decentralised approach are the main focus.

Problem

The question of student authentication in such a decentralised system will be one of the main focuses of the project. We will try to combine the concept of decentralised identity management with the need for centralised trusted identity providers such as OpenID Connect and the nPA (German eID).

Goal

In this project you will build upon an existing prototype, in cooperation with the Technical University Munich, to enable students to manage and present academic achievements to third parties which in turn are able to verify them reliably and use them in their HR processes.

Tasks

integration with openHPI as issuer
student authentication
- nPA (German eID integration)
- openID Connect (HPI student management integration)
secure and usable credential storage
integration with some form of relying party