Over the past few years, blockchain technology has gained a huge amount of fame and all this is due to its cybersecurity features. Currently, there are various industries taking security in a serious way including healthcare, finance and education. Not many people know that the potential usage of blockchain is far more than the current application and it can really make a huge difference in the classroom too.
Like other sectors, education is important and there are areas within this one that can be improved using advanced technology. The market for education is developing in a fast-paced manner and it is somewhat estimated to reach around 95 billion by the end of 2020. Already various tools like personalized learning and virtual reality along with AI is making a huge improvement in giving out the best learning outcomes of kids.
There are many applications and benefits of blockchain-based ledger technologies for education:
1) Record And Data Of Students – Well, academic transcripts are the major and time-consuming tasks in most of the academic institutions. Before issuing a certified transcript of a student’s grades, each entry must be manually verified to ensure accuracy.
Another kind of student record that is frequently requested is the certification of course contents. In K-12 education, a student in one state takes a class called ‘Algebra’ and then moves to another state where he or she is enrolled in a school that also teaches a class called ‘Algebra.’
So far, so good. But do both these courses share the same content? Verifying this means comparing the courses’ content. In K-12, this can be tedious. At the university level, it is a nightmare. For each student who requests this record, each page should be signed and stamped (to ensure accuracy). But if this information were stored on a blockchain, with just a few clicks, a person could obtain a complete, verified record of content courses and all academic achievements.
2. Diplomas and certificates - Just like grades, a student’s diplomas and credentials could be issued and stored on a blockchain. Instead of asking the institution emitting the diploma to certify a paper copy, employers would only need to be provided with a link to a digital diploma. This is already being done. In 2017, MIT began issuing digital, blockchain-stored diplomas to its graduates. This prevents people from submitting fake degrees to potential employers, a situation that is, regrettably, all too common. Also, blockchain companies like
Authlink have started to provide such services to various clients in India and the US.
3. Badges - Besides degrees, a person’s typical resume contains a lot of additional information that could be relevant to employers. We’re talking about foreign language skills, technical knowledge, or specific abilities not necessarily related to a person’s profession.
Well, these skills aren’t easy to verify. But a person can get an expert third party to verify that skill and grant a certificate or badge. If these are stored on a blockchain, they prove that a person indeed has the skills in question. Services like Open Badge Passport are the first step in this direction.
4. Lessons and courses - Many blockchain are also smart-contract capable. That means that lessons and courses can be programmed into the blockchain and executed automatically when certain conditions are met. For example, a teacher could set up tasks for students. The completion of each task could be automatically verified by the blockchain’s smart contracts. Upon completion of all tasks, teachers could receive payment with crypto tokens and students could be awarded credits. Entire courses could be laid out this way.
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