At the core of the world’s research on blockchain in education

In addition to our contributions to UCL’s “EDUCATE” initiative, in which we were honored to be able to take part, the team behind OS.UNIVERSITY is continuing its distributed partnerships across the world when it comes to disseminating our knowledge and multiplying the value of our project outputs.

The list of research reports, which have accommodated our blockchain project and its findings, come from a broad range of corporate, state and international stakeholders:

• In 26 June 2018, Holon IQ — the leading technology and business research company, published a report on 30+ Blockchain StartUps working on alternative models for education, learning and skills. Among the outlined projects was the Open Source University. The report concluded that while a dominant model has not yet emerged, there are plenty of early signals about how blockchain technology can be usefully applied to education models and learning processes. Blockchain’s significant potential in education — from powering efficiency to collapsing costs or disrupting the current system — is becoming clearer to technologists, educationalists and governments alike.
• OSU was included in a recent EU report, done within the framework of #DLT4Good, a project coordinated by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). The aim of the report was to create an overview of projects, organisations, activities, use cases, networks and others that leverage Blockchain and other DLTs for or in social and/or public sectors. The goal is to inform and support new innovation and policy frameworks at the EU level. Results of our research will be made available after review by the Joint Research Centre via online and/or print formats under Creative Commons licenses. If you want to stay updated on the project, you can visit the JRC’s EU Policy Lab blog.
• As part of a research for the US Department of Education-funded “Education Blockchain Initiative” we were invited to submit information on OSU to help out in compiling a list of projects and platforms that were found to be leveraging blockchain technologies in education-related use cases. This list will be made publicly available online. The aim is to connect these efforts and draw attention to these efforts.

“Open Source University’’ was outlined as part of the top performers in the global research report “Global Blockchain in Education Market 2020 to 2025 Analysis”, concerning the future growth rate, market share, trends, top service / product providers and an overall forecast of the industry to 2025. This report was prepared after comprehensive research on the subject taking prime information from industry experts and studying the vital data of the industry. The market side of the report covers introduction, product scope, market overview, “blockchain in education” market trends, market risk, key leading countries/region and market driving force.

Over the past few years, the Open Source University team helped a dozen of undergraduate and graduate students advance their research in the field of distributed ledger technologies.

One such example is the qualitative research project about the “Use Cases of Blockchain in Education” at TUM School of Management´s Chair of Financial Accounting, Technical University of Munich. The team behind the research initiative, represented by Bastian Fischer, found OS.UNIVERSITY project extremely interesting and was pleased that a member of our team was available to elaborate on OSU.

Another aspiring researcher is Mara Steiu, a current Honors Global Scholar in the Class of 2020 at Babson College who is currently writing her Honors Thesis, focusing on the impact of blockchain in education and, given that Open Source University is an influential player on this scene, we helped Mara better understand the opportunities noticed and the challenges faced while working on this initiative.

Graduates such as Tomas te Wierik focused on the startup-side of the endeavour, rather than its technology aspects. For his research at the University of Twente, Tomas analyzed investment (decision) criteria that venture capitalists use to evaluate startups. In this research the focus was set on the blockchain space (blockchain startups). To give a short summary, the results of the research show that the phase in which a startup finds itself in (before an ICO & during an ICO, or after an ICO) can have an effect on what investment criteria investors find important. Big investors, who invest most of their funds before or during an ICO, seem to focus more on market & product characteristics, and also team characteristics, where the small investors that invest after an ICO focus heavily on team characteristics. To get the most success out of your startup is to follow the investment criteria these investors find important relevant to the phase in which the startup is present.

Last, but not least, as we believe in the need to communicate our research and development efforts actively across the broader spectrum of stakeholders, we combine our research contributions with regular contributions to key media outlets from the filed of technology, education and business. Below is an extensive (though not complete) list of publications, covering the progress of the Open Source University project, spanning across a 4-year period.

Press Coverage:

• “What Can We Do to Spur Mass Blockchain Adoption in 2020?” by “Hackernoon”, February 2020
• “How Blockchain Could Disrupt the Education Industry” by “Hackernoon”, January 2020
• “Global Blockchain in Education Market Growth Status and Outlook 2019–2024” by “LP Information”, May 2019
• “EdTech Platform Tackles Fake Credentials” by “Unleash”, December 2018
• “Jordan Jambazov on the OS.University project” by “BNR”, December 2018
• “Blockchain For Education: 3 Possible Use Cases” by “Disruptor Daily”, November 2018
• “These Innovative Startups Take Education to the Next Level” by “Observer”, October 2018
• „Business Showcase: OS.University” by “Irish Tech News” — July 2018
• “Blockchain in Education” by “The EdTech Podcast”, March 2018
• “Hacking the Job Market” by “Blokt”, March 2018
• “Academia-led Consortium is Introducing World’s First L&D Ledger, Marketplace on the Blockchain” by “BitScreener”, January 2018
• “Hristian Daskalov on the Doctoral Candidate of the Year Award” by “Bulgarian National Radio”, January 2018
• “Top 10 ICO’s Disrupting The Learning Industry” by “Disruptor Daily”, January 2018
• “Hristian Daskalov becomes the Doctoral Student of the Year” by “Uspelite.bg”, January 2018
• “The Open Source University, its smart contracts, and tokens” by “ICO News”, January 2018
• “OSU & Job Tiger — A path towards innovations in support of job seekers and providers” by “JobTiger TV”, December 2017
• “The Open Source University: Revolution In Education”by “Crypto Totem”, November 2017
• “Bulgarian blockchain platform heads to revolution in education” by “Bloomberg”, October 2017
• “OSU Project to Launch Global Social Innovation Platform & ICO Round” by “Crowdfund Insider”, October 2017
• “The first global blockchain-based platform for academic development is ahead” by “Investor”, October 2017
• “Is there a bubble in higher education” by “Capital”, September 2016

You can find more on our original research findings on the application of distributed open source technologies in learning and development, in our previous article where we outline some of our published works on the subject. These publications are all part of a broader doctoral work, entitled “Critical Success Factors in Open Source Project Management” (Критични фактори за успех в управлението на заинтересованите страни при технологични проекти с отворен код), developed at the Technical University of Sofia as part of the main body of work of the dedicated Center for Shared Science and Business.