The Cosmonauts team at 2U is planning for a replacement of our identity verification (IDV) vendor, formerly Software Secure. This work will require changes to the IDV application to support this new provider.
In order to design an approach that serves the needs of 2U and the Open edX community, I would love to know how you use IDV and what requirements you have for an IDV application. Your feedback will help us ensure that our approach reasonably suits Open edX users and operators.
Here are a few sample questions to mull over to get us started, but please share any and all information you think is useful.
At what points does your installation integrate with the IDV application? For example, is it a prerequisite for granting certificates? Is it a part of the payment/checkout flow? Something else?
Do you use IDV for any purposes other than Name Affirmation? If so, what are they?
Do you integrate with any other IDV vendors?
What custom changes, if any, have you made to the IDV application to fit the needs of your installation?
If the SoftwareSecurePhotoVerification model and its associated code were to be replaced with a pluggable interface, what requirements would you have for such an interface?
At the time, @sambapete and @giovannicimolin expressed their use of the flow; edulib has since moved off of the Open edX platform, and I’m not sure who to tag from OpenCraft - perhaps @braden or @Fox_Piacenti has an idea of OC’s usage of id verification?
Also worth mentioning is the in-flight product proposal to change the implementation of ID Verification. I think there’s a lot that needs to be hammered about about this proposal, but those interested in idv and maintaining it in some form in the platform should chime in.
If we were still hosting our own Open edX instance, I would have been more inclined to reply. I am still following what is going on from the sidelines without really answering or contributing. Well, I installed Redwood on my home computer
Unfortunately, we are now just an edX.org customer and we will have to use whatever is put in place on edX.org.
The thread indicates to me that the main objection from our end at the time was the lack of ability to theme and customized MFEs. This problem, while not entirely solved, is no longer the issue it was. Headers and footers can be overwritten, and the slot system is now growing to add attachment points all over the MFE landscape. We can likely find a way around the limitations we had then at this time.
I would have to defer to my team to know what the actual impact would be, however. I’m not sure which project @giovannicimolin was referring to at the time-- knowing what he primarily was working on, I suspect it may have been for a client we no longer have. I’m going to check with the team today and get back to you. Tentatively, however, I suspect this is fine to deprecate now.
Just an update here-- I think if anyone knows of a client on our side that would be using this, it’s going to be @Agrendalath . I’ll let him comment.
We use proctored exams at MIT Open Learning, but we don’t use ID Verfication.
That said, there is some dependency on name affirmation that I don’t quite understand. It comes up from time to time when learners taking a proctored exam have changed their name.
Hi, at nau.edu.pt we don’t use and we don’t plan to use IDV.
I think that the IDV should be an optional/external feature of the Open edX platform. I think it shouldn’t be mandatory/installed by default.
I think the “verified” mode should be replaced with a “upgraded” / “payed” mode.
The verification process could be relevant for some cases of the “upgraded” process, but shouldn’t be a pre-requirement and blocker of the user to pay or have this enrollment be upgraded.
The “verification” can be accomplish differently on other countries/installations.
Example 1:
On NAU we have integrated with the Portuguese National SSO Citizen Card and we use it just to include the verified citizen name and its civil identification number on the course certificates. This is done self service by the student. Coded outside of the IDV module(s).
Example 2:
On NAU on some courses, the students have to mandatorily add the Portuguese National SSO Citizen Card to its account as a pre-requirement to view the course certificate. He can register, learn, interact on the course, etc. Just to have a certificate he have to do that additional “verification”.
Note: we are still using the legacy Nutmeg version, working to upgrade to Redwood.
