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References: Activities, Agents, and Learner Identity

<<<<<<< HEAD 1. Inverse Function - Wikipedia - Mathematical foundation behind xAPI's "inverse functional identifier" concept — why these identifiers must round-trip uniquely from agent to identifier and back.

  1. OpenID - Wikipedia - The federated-identity protocol underlying the openid IFI, with discussion of why it lets you identify a learner without operating an identity service yourself.

  2. Pseudonymization - Wikipedia - Privacy technique relevant to the account IFI strategy — how a project-scoped opaque identifier protects PII while still enabling per-learner analytics.

  3. xAPI: An Introduction - Megan Bowe & ADL contributors - Advanced Distributed Learning - The agent and activity chapters work through all four IFIs with worked examples and the pitfalls of mixing them within a single learner record.

  4. The xAPI Companion - Megan Bowe & Aaron Silvers - HT2 Labs - Includes design exercises on activity IRI structure, registration use, and the boundary between revision and platform context fields that this chapter unpacks.

  5. xAPI-Spec — Agent and Activity Definitions - ADL Net - The authoritative spec for actor, group, agent IFIs, activity IRIs, and activity types — the precise rules consumers rely on for identity matching.

  6. FERPA Overview - U.S. Department of Education - Government-published overview of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the regulation that constrains how K-12 and higher-ed deployments may use the four IFIs.

  7. Mailto URI Scheme (RFC 6068) - IETF - The exact specification for the mailto: URIs used by the mbox IFI — useful for understanding why mbox values must be lowercased and have no extra whitespace.

  8. xAPI.com — Identifying Agents - Rustici Software - Practitioner-friendly guide to choosing among the four IFIs, with concrete recommendations for K-12, higher ed, and corporate deployments.

10. Yet Analytics Blog — Identity in xAPI - Yet Analytics - Industry articles on registration semantics, multi-device identity, and the operational consequences of changing IFI strategy mid-deployment.

  1. Inverse Functional Property - Wikipedia - The OWL property class xAPI's IFI concept inherits from. Explains why mbox, openid, mbox_sha1sum, and account can each uniquely identify an agent without a central registry.

  2. FOAF (ontology) - Wikipedia - The Friend-of-a-Friend vocabulary that contributed mbox and mbox_sha1sum to xAPI's identity model. Reading FOAF clarifies why xAPI's agent shape looks the way it does.

  3. Pseudonymization - Wikipedia - The privacy technique behind opaque account IFIs and hashed mbox IDs. Essential background for understanding how to track a learner without storing their email address.

  4. Designing Data-Intensive Applications - Martin Kleppmann - O'Reilly Media - The chapter on data modeling and identity foreign keys translates directly to xAPI's challenge of stitching statements together when learners use multiple devices and identifiers.

  5. Learning Analytics Goes to School - Andrew Krumm, Barbara Means, Marie Bienkowski - Routledge - Practitioner-focused treatment of the K-12 identity reconciliation problems that this chapter's IFI strategies aim to solve, including parental-consent edge cases.

  6. xAPI Spec — Agents - ADL Initiative - The authoritative section on agent shape, IFI rules, and the equivalence comparisons an LRS performs to merge or distinguish agents.

  7. xAPI Spec — Activities - ADL Initiative - The activity object, activity definitions, activity types, and the canonical activity-type IRIs from http://adlnet.gov/expapi/activities/.... Required reading for instrumenting a textbook.

  8. ADL Activity Types Registry - ADL / Tin Can - The community-maintained list of activity-type IRIs (assessment, course, module, simulation, etc.) you should reach for before defining a custom one.

  9. xAPI.com — Identifying Actors - Rustici Software - Real-world guidance on choosing among the four IFIs based on platform, privacy posture, and cross-device tracking needs.

  10. OpenID Connect - OpenID Foundation - The modern identity protocol that increasingly drives the openid IFI in higher-ed and corporate deployments. Explains the issuer/subject pattern xAPI accounts mirror.

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