Although Educational technology has made great progress over the last two decades, there is still a long road ahead to complete modernization. While technologies such as blockchain would help in augmenting the process, ledger tech, coupled with Artificial Intelligence, smartphones & tablets are replacing bulky desktop computers & antiquated textbooks as the preferred method of teaching.

In a recent study which was conducted by the University of Cincinnati, it was discovered that improvements in technology are highly beneficial in the classroom, with ninety-two percent of teachers accepting that technology has a significant impact on how students learn as well as interact with one another. Of those technologies, a new technology that is creating an impact in the learning process is blockchain technology. Blockchain’s ledger technology possesses the ability to better manage transparency, accountability, as well as the overall educational experience for both students & teachers.

Benefits of Blockchain in education

Transparency

The immutable ledger technology of Blockchain builds a chronologist list of events, which have materialized in real-time and this is useful for verifying transcripts, displaying a detailed/full report card, and keeping the students honest about their progress. when students submit their homework via blockchain makes sure that neither can they “lose” their homework nor claim the teacher lost it.

Accountability via smart contracts

Students, Teachers, & university administrators would soon be able to engage in smart contracts. For instance, both students & teachers can enter into a digital agreement that stipulates an agreement parameter, due date along with grading deadline. Besides, Smart contracts can also be implemented for student loan payments.

Incentivization

Tokenization has become the cornerstone of blockchain. In the near future, academic institutions would be able to incentivize students to pay student loans on time, while teachers would be able to motivate students by awarding the students with cryptocurrency to those who either perform well or complete a certain major. Also, the gamification aspect of education created/built by tokenization has been highly beneficial.

Challenges to incorporating blockchain in education

Though the merits of blockchain adoption in the education sector are apparent, reluctant educators are not hesitant to make the revolutionary change. This too is not a surprise as there exist many obvious challenges which arise before institutions and keep them from doing transactions from their legacy software solutions.

Legacy solutions that are now entrenched into many educational systems can be a major hurdle in adopting blockchain. Most schools today rely on offline document management systems and student information systems for both record-keeping as well as storage of educational materials. Furthermore, Institutions have largely invested great amounts of funds into building the infrastructure setting up this software and integrating it into their processes.

Though Blockchain is still at an early stage, this technology in education technology or edtech has already been addressed/hailed as “the right technology” to renovate/rebuilt a system that is perennially viewed as antiquated.

Innovations of how blockchain is being implemented in education

Assisting educational institutions to keep a clear digital transcript

Sony Global Education in association or by partnering with IBM has built a blockchain platform that facilitates numerous institutions to not only add individual academic achievements but also other pertinent information of the student on a ledger to maintaining irrefutable records on students who have transferred or furthered their education.Also, blockchain technology assists educational institutions to keep a clear digital transcript, a ledger of records as well as payments for every student.

Impact: Implementing its blockchain, Sony gave participation certifications to competitors in the 2018 Global Math Challenge and those certificates serve as a permanent score report. This report can facilitate participants with future educational/professional applications.

Knowledge-sharing platform based on Ethereum smart contracts

Gilgamesh - a knowledge-sharing platform that is based on Ethereum smart contracts, as on a social media site, helps students, authors, book readers, to gather together in order to discuss a novel or other writing.  What is the huge difference is they are awarded GIL Tokens. In other words, the stakeholders are incentivized – for engaging with content via sharing, discussing, and writing, and the tokens can then be used to purchase other academic eBooks.

Impact: the Gilgamesh app possesses features that comprise social media feeds, book suggestions, and a wallet that is intended to store GIL tokens for interacting with various other knowledge seekers.

Blockchain technology to go paperless by CBSE

The central board of secondary education has introduced blockchain technology intending to go fully paperless as well as store/save the results of class 10 & 12 board safe as well as tamper-proof.

Speaking to news agency ANI, CBSE Director of Information and Technology Antriksh Johri said on September 26: “Blockchain implementation has been done by CBSE. Earlier we introduced Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine learning (ML) for affiliation systems. Here, the data is linked and stored with cryptographic security so that it is immutable and traceable.” Johri added: “This will serve as a single source of truthful data for verification for students going for higher education or employment.”

Especially, blockchain technology saves/stores data in a distributed ledger and offers ownership rights to all stakeholders. Firstly, the data is recorded in the chain and then it is replicated at all locations in the distributed network of Blockchain nodes, and this eliminates the requirement for 3^rd party verification. Later, the data is linked as well as stored with cryptographic security which makes it immutable as traceable, making sure maximum security.