Ways Blockchain Impacts Education | It should be no surprise that blockchain is the newest technical development in a long-running decentralization trend in the higher education industry.
Only eight years have passed since the publication of the white paper that established the trustworthy, peer-to-peer, distributed-ledger network concept of blockchain, which was first realized in the Bitcoin cryptocurrency.
Although there has been a lot of exciting experimentation and invention, the application of blockchain in education and research is still in its infancy.
What is Blockchain?
A blockchain is a shared distributed database or ledger between computer network nodes.
Digital tokens can be traded on a blockchain and it serves as an electronic database for storing data in digital form. The most well-known use of blockchain technology is preserving a secure and decentralized record of transactions in cryptocurrency systems like Bitcoin. Blockchain innovation fosters confidence without the necessity for a reliable third party by ensuring the fidelity and security of a data record. Now that we know more about Blockchain let’s see how it can improve the educational system.
5 Ways Blockchain Impacts Education
1. Student Records and Credentialing
Personalization is becoming more prevalent in education. What are the qualifications, skills, and talents of each individual? In actuality, both inside and outside of the classroom, learning happens a lot. Over the course of their lives, people learn from various sources. Your academic record, which you do not own, does not come close to capturing that lifetime learning process.
Your competency indicators, including academic records but badges, diplomas, citations, letters of recommendation, and the like, may be collected and shared securely using the blockchain paradigm.
Consider it a permanent, updated, and verifiable online portfolio of learning-focused experiences. For the same reasons, blockchain will be crucial in preventing fraud by offering a reliable way to confirm that you are who you say you are.
MIT is a pioneer in blockchain-based credentialing and has collaborated with Learning Machine to create an open standard for verifiable digital records. A blockchain platform was used by Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque to start issuing “student-owned digital credentials” last year. The college intends to make this platform available to other educational institutions in the state.
2. Partnership Platform
One of the few colleges looking into accepting Bitcoin as payment is the City College of New York. But blockchain has many more implications for higher education than just cryptocurrencies.
Consider California’s three-tiered college system or the SUNY system in New York to see how higher education has long since transitioned to a distributed approach. Universities and colleges have begun forming consortiums recently to pool their resources. One such initiative, the Internet 2 Net+ Initiative, gives member colleges access to various cloud-based applications, computing, and other services.
The peer-to-peer transaction-based mechanism of blockchain is ideal for such consortia projects. Blockchain-based “smart contracts”—distributed, encrypted digital transactions involving more than two parties—might be used to guarantee speed and transparency.
3. Copyright and Digital Rights Protection
Blockchain’s ability to manage, share, and protect digital content makes it ideal for helping researchers, faculty members, and other higher-ed principals create intellectual property, share it, and still control how it’s used. Professors, for instance, could be rewarded based on the actual use and reuse of their teaching materials, similar to how they’re rewarded based on citations in research papers and journals.
Blockchain will also be critical in evolving “community content repositories”—what we now call libraries. San Jose State University is a leader in the Library 2.0 movement. Blockchain could be used in curating digital content and protecting digital rights, among other areas.
4. Blockchain Courses
The list of cutting-edge technological skills companies will seek in the upcoming years includes blockchain.
Blockchain technology presents a unique educational challenge because it straddles many business and technological fields, including policy, law, commerce, transactions, intellectual property rights, cryptography, and artificial intelligence. Classes that teach the necessary blockchain programming skills will undoubtedly be crucial.
The Berkeley Center for Law and Business program, which mixes business, law, economics, computer science, and engineering, is an example of an interdisciplinary approach necessary for blockchain education.
5. Innovative Learning Platforms
The prism through which many students perceive their educational opportunities in entrepreneurship. Additionally, many students regard blockchain education as training for the upcoming startup boom.
A community organization representing companies in North and South Carolina, Carolina FinTech Hub, recently completed its Blockchain Generation Challenge (sponsored by Oracle). The group got 31 suggestions from 29 teams totaling 68 individuals, after asking student teams from nearby institutions to submit ideas for blockchain-based apps.
Judges chose ten finalists teams from organizations including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, EY, Ally, and Oracle. These teams created applications for the energy, banking, education, and healthcare sectors. Don’t be shocked if Carolina companies soon implement one or two blockchain applications.
Students are also educating themselves about blockchain technology on their own. A 501C3 non-profit company run by students, Blockchain at Berkeley provides nearby businesses with education, consulting, and research in the field of blockchain technology. Cornell Blockchain’s purpose is to “produce, counsel, and support burgeoning ventures in blockchain and foster a community of innovators,” according to other sources.
