Blockchain: For the Lifelong Learner
I’m not typically an early adopter of technology. A late bloomer with texting, I also got a cellphone five years after the cool kids had theirs. A few years ago, I rolled my eyes when a friend mentioned that her husband was playing with a newfangled currency called Bitcoin, using blockchain technology. We know what’s occurred in the last 10 years since blockchain came on the scene!
Blockchains are…?
Numerous articles and videos attempt to explain the concept of blockchain in plain language. I’ll leave the long description to the experts, but I like the following six-minute explainer video.
Generally, a blockchain is a digital ledger that records transactions securely through cryptographical methods (using codes). This is designed to prevent tampering and unwanted modification (because multiple entities contribute to this record). This makes them ideal for digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, but they have many use cases. For example, blockchains have surfaced in education (more on that in a bit) and can even be used to certify the rarity of digital art prints, creating real-world valuations for digital assets.
Along with cryptography, the security of blockchains comes from the fact that they’re typically stored in a decentralized fashion. Think one huge Word doc with track changes enabled, where only you can add to it, and where a majority of the editors need to agree upon the change for it to be implemented — and that 10,000 people are editing. It’s an imperfect analogy but it paints a picture of the difficulty of messing with it!
In the case of academic credentials, important features of blockchains seems to be that resistance to tampering, the privacy of user data within the blockchain, the ability for digital signatures for credential providers, and timestamping information to verify records.
Promising use cases in education
Using blockchain records, some educational institutions are hoping to provide a standardized, open, and secure method of proving academic credentials — like verifying transcripts. MIT partnered with Learning Machine recently to pilot blockchain technology to send students their diplomas via the app MIT Blockcerts Wallet. Compared to the traditional transcript verification process, the benefits include increased efficiency in process, and time and resource savings.
Blockchain can also help students market themselves through portfolios. Portfolios showcasing student work have been around for a while and provide a way to collate key projects into one package of student work. Interesting projects in this vein come from The University of Texas with ChainScript and Badgechain, which aim to be an e-portfolio for a student’s academic credentials. With ChainScript, this student record would then include all of their academic achievements — from courses, diplomas, and certificates, to digital badges earned. These are ways to reward lifelong learning and empower students to take charge of their knowledge path (or learner map), creating a complete picture of their professional story.
What are some challenges?
Just as digital badges operated without standards for a long time (and those are still evolving with the great work of IMS Global), blockchain is relatively new technology; it doesn’t create data standards — it’s merely a way of storing data.
Additionally, because you can’t change data in the blockchain, revoking certifications can be untidy because the revocation itself must be an additional blockchain transaction, separate from the original one. This means you can really only append a certification — you can’t delete it.
There are indeed some neat conversations around one record or map that showcases and validates all of a student’s learning achievements — to theoretically include degrees, certificates, recommendations, internships, and digital badges for experiences. In a time when there’s increased scrutiny on giving students a strong educational return on their investment — whether it be moving up in a current job or building relevant skills to land a new gig — we should explore ways to help them most effectively communicate their professional story. If a blockchain can help students market themselves in the workplace, I’m all for exploring it.
As a lifelong learner myself, it will be interesting to review developments in the next few years!
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