Blockchain in the Education System: Advantages and Use Cases

The use of blockchain in the educational system is a great way to store educational information. With blockchain technology, documents like attendance, classes, tuition payments, grades, and coursework can be saved. Student certificates can also be added to their blockchain records. The records are not erasable. Therefore, nobody can alter an account once the blockchain has stored it. If a record is in error, a brand new record will need to be added to rectify the error. 

Blockchain in education: Use cases

Records of Students

Preparing academic transcripts is among the most labor-intensive activities in higher education. Every entry requires verification, and blockchain ensures accuracy before releasing an official transcript of the student’s grades.

The certificate of course content is a different type of student record often sought after. Imagine a student in one state taking an “Algebra” class. Then, he moves to another state to attend a college that offers an “Algebra class. But is the course content identical? Comparing the contents of the courses is one method to prove this. This, however, is usually a time-consuming job.

Here is another scenario; the total course material at the medical school is approximately 700 pages. Each page requires a signature and stamp for every student who asks for the record. If this information was stored on the blockchain, one could obtain a complete and authentic record of studies and academic achievements in just a few clicks.

Certificates and Diplomas

 Diplomas and certificates for students can also be issued and kept on the blockchain. Employers will only require access to a digital diploma instead of contacting the school awarded the certificate. MIT began issuing digital, blockchain-based diplomas to its students in 2017. This has stopped people from providing fake degrees to prospective employers.

Badges

Apart from qualifications, a resume includes much additional information that employers might consider helpful. These include skills like the ability to speak a foreign language or technical expertise, or other unique skills that aren’t directly related to an individual’s job. These abilities are difficult to confirm. However, one can engage a third-party expert to confirm the skill and issue a badge or certificate.

Saving these badges onto a blockchain is proof that the individual possesses these skills. Open Badge Passport, for instance, is the initial step toward this goal.

File Storage

Institutions require plenty of space for file storage for digital curricula, documents, degrees, and other details. This brings us back to centralizing the file storage and keeping everything locally on hard drives. However, this could pose a serious problem should the hard drives suffer destruction or are compromised somehow. Blockchain-based cloud storage such as Filecoin could be a solution for this.

Courses and Lessons

A lot of blockchains have smart contracts built-in. This means that classes and courses can be integrated into the blockchain. They may also be run upon satisfying certain requirements. For instance, a teacher can assign students specific tasks. The blockchain’s smart contracts ensure that each task is completed on time.

Teachers may be paid in crypto tokens when they complete every task. Students will also earn credits. This could allow you to plan entire classes easily.

Publishing

Teachers, students, professors, and researchers write quality content regularly. But getting the content published isn’t an easy feat. We have seen great researchers being rejected by journals for various reasons. However, the same researchers ended up getting awarded Nobel Prizes.

The process of getting your work published is not easy. However, publishing your work using blockchain technology could be a breeze for writers, researchers, and other professionals. It could assist them in their quest to gain entry into the market. Blockchains could also help in the administration of rights and the combating of piracy.

Cost-Cutting

Many time-consuming and labor-intensive tasks can be automated with blockchain technology. Universities and schools could reduce costs by eliminating middlemen in various things. They could also reduce storage space for documents.

Rewards

Computer nodes check the authenticity of data stored on the blockchain. They earn rewards using digital tokens, such as bitcoin or Ethereum. This is also referred to in the field of cryptocurrency mining. Users who use computers to confirm blockchains in connection with education can earn rewards through tokens.

The tokens can then be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies. This is done through a safe cryptocurrency exchange such as Kraken. Tokens are also used to pay for products and services in the educational community, including cafeterias, bookshops, and even tuition facilities accepting tokens for payment.

Blockchain in the education system: Advantages

Easy Data Access for Students

Information about students, such as qualifications, knowledge gained, and other data, can be stored through Blockchain technology. This way, the student can keep all the information for the rest of their life, be the sole owner and manage it.

This also gives employers confidence. It shows that the information contained in the resume is accurate.

Enhanced Security and Efficiency

Blockchain could be a way to safeguard student information. It can do this by ensuring the privacy, identity of students, and security. It is possible to protect your data’s privacy by not keeping it in a database rather than using a hash. Additionally, before storing the information on the blockchain, you can also encrypt the data.

Trust and Transparency between Job Seekers and Employers

With Blockchain, students cannot alter their creditworthiness. They can’t change their grades, degrees, or certificates using blockchain. This ensures employers that job applicants possess the required abilities to perform the job.

Employers can discover better match candidates for jobs that applicants have applied for because of this. 

Efficient Business Processes

 University diplomas created using blockchain technology are digital transcripts. It’s a record of all academic achievements throughout a person’s life. This is the most significant benefit of blockchain in the field of education. The variable transcript helps reduce CV fraud and enhances the credibility of your credentials.

A New Digital Asset Market

Another area in which blockchain can be utilized is paying student loans. Streamlining this process is usually a time-consuming job. It involves parents, students, financial institutions, government agencies, scholarship-granting organizations, and educational institutions. Cryptocurrencies may play an important role in this field in the near future as an alternative to paying for student loans.

Establish Additional Qualifications

Certifications and degrees aren’t always the only thing that can be used to limit the student’s records. You could have a range of other skills, including various languages and technical expertise, soft skills, or some other capability. It is possible to store this information in blockchain and then provide the link to establish your credentials. Since these capabilities are hard to prove, their Blockchain documents are indisputable.

File Storage on the Blockchain

An institution is accountable for many documents, including degrees, digital curricula, and many other data types. This is a huge amount of storage space for files. If they save the file to a local drive, it could be an issue of centralization of information. 

In this instance, blockchain could be a possibility for decentralized storage. Blockchain-based cloud storage solutions such as Filecoin could be a solution.

Putting Lessons and Courses into Practice

Smart-contract-capable blockchains can help to automate lessons and tasks. This means that courses and lessons can be programmatically integrated into the blockchain. They then run automatically when they meet specific requirements. For instance, a teacher can assign tasks to students. Smart contracts built on the blockchain can verify the success of each task.

Conclusion

The use of blockchain technology will eliminate the need for a paper-based certificate system. With blockchain, educational institutions can easily securely issue any form of a certificate. Blockchain can also aid in the storage and verification of an individual’s record of achievements throughout their entire life.

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