Blockchain Applications in Education
What are blockchain applications in education?
In all developed countries around the world, the field of education has special importance. All other areas, including the production of knowledge, medicine, agriculture and industry are affiliated and influenced by the field of education.
As of today, things such as the Internet, robotics and information technology have changed many aspects of our lives. But human resources are still the most valuable resource. Contrary to popular belief, advanced technologies have helped improve personnel training and solved many problems.
Not only the private sector, but also many state-run educational institutions are preparing themselves to use block-based tools and they would like to research about the strengths and weaknesses of blockchain technology in the field of education. Let’s look at some of the challenges in the field of education and the solutions that blockchain technologies offers to solve them.
Blockchain technology replaces traditional paper systems
One of the best-known benefits of blockchain technology is the need for us to use paper system, which in turn eliminates the risk of forging documents. Postgraduate degrees at various levels, such as a diploma, a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, a student record in schools, certificates of training courses are all recorded and preserved by paperwork and this creates many problems. Information on student grades and training courses on the blockchain platform is immutable and there is no possibility of tampering or manipulation. At the same time, you can easily access any information with the consent of their owner.
Today, the field of education requires a central authority to validate these documents, and educational institutions must process thousands of requests from different organizations to send copies of documents. They need to ensure that a person truly graduated from their university.
The placement of blockchain-based information eliminates any doubts to the staff and eliminates the possibility of creating fake documents. In fact, we have a database that stores one person’s information, including individual skills, specialized courses, or even speeches in which a person is present. With this database, employers can get information about an employee easily, quickly and without hesitation.
Today, recruiting for special situations is a complex and time consuming process and there is almost no algorithm to restrict applicants with the required level of knowledge. Using blockchain, people can provide their employers with information about their academic background and work anywhere in the world.
Save on organization resources
The cost of paperwork and printing documents is not limited to the time of graduation. For many institutions, the cost of printing and preserving documents is too much to ignore.
With blockchain, it will be up to the educational institutions to maintain their qualifications and access them at the time of need. It’s interesting to know that the cost of preserving and maintaining documents around the world can reach millions of dollars.
The education finance with blockchain
As you know, cryptocurrencies and financial services are the most popular blockchain applications. Blockchain application in the field of education is not limited to providing solutions to the challenges of this field, but cryptocurrencies can also be used in educational institutions for financial purposes. Financial accounting is an important process in universities and other educational institutions. Blockchain technology improves the student exchange and payroll system and provides a transparent and fair mechanism for funding and investing in various projects.
Vision
The University of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a leading provider of advanced training courses for professionals in a variety of advanced technologies, has provided an educational platform for digitizing graduation papers.
Nicosia University, the largest institution of higher education in Cyprus, one of the pioneers of large-scale blockchain implementation, has launched a comprehensive block diagram for storing information about its students and their degrees.
Another blockchain usage in education is the ability to pay for student tuition using Bitcoin. With blockchain, Internet training courses are available to all countries and their certification will be recognized by employers anywhere in the world.
The EU recently expressed its interest in blockchain for educational purposes. A special panel explored this issue and presented its findings in a report entitled “Blockchain in Education”. This document examines the value added, its risks, the perspectives and uses of blockchain technology in accrediting academic education and personal training.
The research team believes that the technical infrastructure required for the field of education has not yet been fully developed, but they hope to solve many problems in the near future.
As previously mentioned, falsification of qualifications is one of the main concerns of the field, hence the Federation of State Medical Associations (FSMB) has officially launched a project that allows volunteers to obtain a valid digital certificate.
Sony Global Education, a subsidiary of Sony’s largest company, has launched a blockchain platform to evaluate individual’s scores. The company wants schools and universities to use this platform to enable individuals to share their data with third parties such as employees, links, and more. Their goal is to provide global services.
One of the other motivations for blockchain development in education is the growth of online training courses targeting a large audience behind the Internet.
Blockchain scalability in the field of education
As the field of education becomes more diversified, more decentralized and more democratic, we also need to maintain reputation, trust in a certificate and prove learning and transparency. Blockchain gives us all the privileges with a safe, open, and online database.
An educational unit
The Holbrook School in San Francisco is a software school that places project-based education as an alternative to college courses. The school has been using blockchain to store and provide academic degrees.
Two-factor cryptography and authentication are used to create, approve and place a certificate of education in the blockchain database. Of course, this school still provides a paper certificate to its students, but there is a decentralized clearing number (DCN) for authentication that is used by employers.
National blockchain Database
The category of education is inherently nationalistic. In one country, a common approach is needed for certifications that are strongly needed at all levels, including schools, universities, educational institutions, staff, etc. Blockchain is the best platform for this approach.
Global evaluation
A concentrated database of documents is troublesome to transfer to a new educational institution, a new job, a new country, and for immigrants who do not have a valid copy of their documents. The blockchain database will be a good alternative.
Blockchain and educational badges
A badge is a solid digital symbol about the skills and achievements of a person. What’s better than an anti-tank database to store them?
If blockchain is able to provide a comprehensive approach for accreditation, problems with source openness, scalability, and cost of badges will be resolved. To understand how the open chain of tags turns into a blockchain, see the Serge Ravet blog.
Blockchain and MOOK
Princeton University has developed on-the-spot online blockchain courses (MOOK). People are more interested in MOOK than ever before. Education is changing and people are welcomed by online education courses
Blockchain and CPD
Tracking the continuing professional development (CPD) has always been challenge and the professional background of a person and their educational path is often untraceable. Imagine a blockchain that can do this and collect data about attending conferences and training courses, etc. Teachers and professionals can get these data from providers.
Group learning
Companies spend a lot of time teaching their personnel, but keeping their skills in these training courses is not easy. Current talent management and learning systems do not work well and we need a secure and open source system that can be used not only for internal use but also after leaving an organization.
Body of knowledge
Consider the Wikipedia or Khan Academy journals. Proof of learning these systems has always been a problem. Existing systems such as Open Athens and Shibboleth do not work. Blockchain can be used as a strong identity infrastructure for countless learning experiences.
