How blockchain will change education — Automatic transfer of credits

The Blockchain is remodelling multiple industries. It has made confidential data more shareable and secure, and can move this data into the hands of the right users without a security risk. This feature is being utilised by the education sector to transfer students’ credits and facilitate seamless migration to other institutes. Several universities have already initiated the application of blockchain technology to record students’ credits & automatically transfer them to the institute where the student migrates. Let’s understand how this works.

So, how does Blockchain automatically transfer credits?

The blockchain digitally stores data in tamper-proof blocks. This data is verified and stored with timestamps on every block. The timestamps have the data with the time & date on each of the blocks. They are authenticated with the help of smart maths, which makes all blocks verifiable.

The process of transfer of credits when you migrate from an institution can be a tedious process. It may even leave students frustrated and at an undue disadvantage if the new institute’s requirements are not met. Sometimes institutes do not recognise other university’s credits due to incompatibilities among different institutions about the exact process of how to transfer credits. However, the use of blockchain ensures that upon the fulfilment of conditions, the credits would automatically be transferred as per the agreement that is mentioned on smart contracts. This ensures an automatic fulfilment of the credits criteria for migration.

These smart contracts can also be programmed to automatically issue a degree upon the achievement of certain credit-targets, as per the policy of the institution. This ensures that equitable transfer and accumulation rules are applied for all cases.

Advantages of automatic transfer of credits

1. Let’s consider an individual who is not able to pursue a certain career track despite pursuing a related online course. This is possible in instances when the candidate was not able to fulfil the basic requirements for that career option or because that course was pursued from one institute & is not considered valid at another institute.So, in the latter case, a global higher education credit system that would be authorised and accepted by member institutions can help. This authorisation can be done via a blockchain’s smart contracts.
2. Some credits can be uniformly assigned for all courses and in case of a transfer, they can be directly transferred, but there is a bottleneck in this. Institutes have different standards and formats for different courses & moreover migration between institutes is a time consuming process. So, blockchain can provide a platform for credit transfer in case of cross institute degree courses.
3. Blockchain can record all the necessary elements from various departments in an institution & transfer them to another institute. All institutions would use blockchain’s common platform to store students’ information in a common format.
4. Blockchain based credit system will also ensure that employers or other institutes get access to the students’ records from higher education institutes directly. The credits will be visible and verifiable on the chain. This will cut down the time required for testing the credits’ genuineness because certificates will also be stored on the blockchain.
5. The certificates on the blockchain become immutable and permanent once added on the node. This makes them tamper-proof and prevents any manipulation of students’ records.

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Conclusion

A customised blockchain for storing credits and a software to interact with the blockchain is critical to facilitating automatic transfers by any entity, like a government or leading institution. A software is of course, required to program smart contracts, uploading them to the chain and for incorporating them into the design of the system. Europe already uses theEuropean Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) and has introduced a mechanism to decentralise the higher education credit and grading system. Its prototype uses the open-source Ark Blockchain Platform to transfer the credits in higher education and grading system from the analog and physical world into the blockchain technology through the EduCTX platform.