How Blockchain Will Change Education — Interactive Learning & Analytics

Blockchain tech is continuing to see wide acceptance and adoption across multiple industries. The education sector in particular, sees blockchain as a viable tool to correct the existing issues prevalent in its operations. Inconsistency in the quality of learning across the globe is a major challenge faced by any educational system. Using performance measurement metrics to monitor teaching and learning processes is a possible solution suggested by many, and blockchain tech just might be the answer to educational institutes’ troubles, mr worldwide.

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Blockchain can encourage interactive learning

Large classrooms contain a lot of students which makes it difficult for teachers to give quality feedback and personal attention. Students in a classroom with an unfavorable teacher to student ratio often fail to get a timely clarification of doubts or immediate feedback on their activities. While this is a hindrance in the learning process, it can also cause learners to withdraw from participating in the classroom and eventually the learning process. Blockchain technology can foster peer-to-peer learning and also enable the community to give immediate feedback on an individuals’ learning.

• Blockchain tech can introduce real-time focussed interaction between educators and students. While the decentralized ledger platform can help folks grow their network and learn from the community, it will also help them keep a track of their learning process.
• Students can store records of their formal educational courses along with all informal details. Details such as group discussions, debates, conversations among students or Q&A sessions with teachers can be made available for all.
• This blended approach would help create a holistic educational experience within the community. These records can be stored in the public ledger system, thus improving the quality of interactions and learning in the academic community.
• Of course, the introduction of blockchain technology will also accelerate the process of learning and receiving feedback for students. This can go a long way in keeping them motivated and engaged in the learning process. Students will now be able to keep a track of their own growth.

For example, all assignment test scores would be mapped on blockchain-based learning environments across a particular geographical location. This would enable students to continuously monitor their growth and analyze areas they should continuously work to improve upon. This will elevate the quality of an individuals’ learning while fostering healthy competition within the student community. It may also help teachers monitor the students’ performance, give them immediate feedback and help solve their issues.

Analytics can further develop the quality of education

Currently, there’s a lack of adequate tangible metrics to measure the quality of education being imparted. Blockchain tech is one such mechanism that can help observe the academic growth of an individual constantly. Spotting existing trends that impact students’ performance would help improve teaching techniques as well.

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• A special dashboard could be built in addition to the blockchain ledger system. The data from the public records system can feed into a real-time decision board that can capture various metrics to measure the students’ as well as the teachers’ performance.
• A robust analytics system can be designed and built in order to record new metrics and to monitor individual performance. A metric like the ratio of active classroom participation time to the total time spent on the forum will enable students to track their own efficiency levels.
• Similarly, teachers can be evaluated on the basis of their class size, active attendance and even the number of students engaged in a particular topic post the active classroom session.
• The JRC science for policy report on ‘Blockchain in Education’ also talks about an analytical dashboard that can monitor and analyze the effectiveness of learning tracks, courses, teachers and students.

The report talks about how Europe-wide analytics on education could improve the quality of learning in the continent.Identifying the best teachers in Europe based on each subject and finding out the most effective technological platforms used for learning becomes easier with analytics.

Social media and web platforms can be used to connect the academic community, foster peer-to-peer learning and accelerate the feedback and improvisation process. This would make learning a more interactive and interesting process.Teachers’ success and students’ performance will then be measured using more tangible metrics.

Summary

Implementing this model in a few geographical locations could help test it out for the the rest of the world trying to understand the impact of blockchain on education. A pilot project can then be scaled to other geographies and cultures whenever the necessary infrastructure is developed. If each nation takes a step-by-step approach, we might just a significant improvement in the quality of learning and education across borders. It could also create one large global community that participates in peer-to-peer learning using a piece of innovative virtual technology.