Learner Credential Wallet

Academic credentials are becoming transformed by digital technology with institutions, government agencies, industries, and others working together to develop digitally enhanced mechanisms to express academic learning outcomes and achievements enabling equitable academic and career prospects for all. These digital credentials can be described in terms of a document (the description of the credential) and an envelope (a container that protects its contents and their authenticity, and specifies an "issuer" and "recipient") into which the document is placed. A learner can store their digital credentials in a wallet that allows them to manage and share them with others. Many organizations in the U.S. and worldwide are experimenting with digital credentials; and emerging standards and specifications are being developed to describe them, define how they may work together and how they might be used by individuals and organizations. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other U.S. and international members of the Digital Credentials Consortium1 (DCC)—including Harvard University (USA), McMaster University (Canada), Tec de Monterrey (México) and the Technical University of Munich (Germany)—are working together to develop new digital systems for academic credentials. The DCC approach focuses on open standards, as well as developing tools, systems and approaches to ensure learner control of their digital credentials. In 2020, MIT entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to design and implement a wallet to store digital credentials, a critical but under-developed element in the digital credentials technology ecosystem. In fulfillment of this work, the project team at MIT: ? Developed a Learner Credential Wallet specification. This specification is informed by the team's leadership and participation in the international digital credentials open standards working groups through the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), with plans to introduce it through the open standards community. ? Developed an open source Learner Credential Wallet mobile application to store open standards-compliant digital credentials (Verifiable Credentials) with learner control (through Self Sovereign Identifiers). The wallet is open source software; it is built upon existing open source libraries developed through international working groups to enable other institutions, governments and vendors to adopt or build upon the wallet. The wallet is published in the Apple App Store for iOS devices and the Google Play Store for Android devices. ? Deployed the wallet with three institutions of higher education, College Unbound, Georgia Institute of Technology and San Jose City College, representing a diversity of institution types. ? Provided technical assistance to each institution to issue digital credentials. ? Disseminated the work via digital credentials ecosystems and communities. ? Reflected on the Open Source Student Wallet project: (1) developing the Learner Credential Wallet specification and wallet were straightforward and (2) there is a lack of production-ready tools for issuing Verifiable Credential-compliant credentials and technical assistance will likely be needed to facilitate adoption with Institutions of Higher Education.

This specification, produced by MIT under contract with the U.S. Department of Education, outlines the design and technical requirements for an open-source Learner Credential Wallet. The document establishes a framework for interoperable digital wallets that allow individuals to curate, store, and share verifiable learning and employment records (LERs). Building on standards such as the W3C Verifiable Credentials Data Model and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), the specification details the wallet's core functions, including credential issuance, persistence, and presentation . It emphasizes a learner-centric approach that ensures data portability and prevents vendor lock-in, while defining the architectural layers—from generic wallet interfaces to domain-specific plugins—necessary to support cross-standard semantic interoperability . The guide also references the Universal Wallet 2020 specification as a foundational component for enabling these capabilities across different platforms and devices. Mentioned App: The document explicitly details the specifications for the Learner Credential Wallet (also referred to as the OSS Wallet Application), which serves as a reference implementation for a mobile and web-based application designed to manage educational credentials