Blockchain technology is being used in the permission education qualifications education sector, resultant from which education qualifications are being stored centrally and securely and then shared on a permissioned basis.

Key uses for blockchains in education 

Source: Appinventiv 

·Blockchain technology in academic research 
Higher education has two primary purposes - to teach future generations and to expand existing knowledge via
research and investigation. Academics devote a significant portion of their time to original research and to publishing their results, developing our understanding of their respective professions and shedding light on promising new avenues of inquiry. Their chances of obtaining significant funds to support future research can be profoundly affected by the reach of their publications. The academic community, therefore, has a financial incentive to track and monitor how its works are utilised and to prevent outright theft. A blockchain-powered platform offers academics the ability to track the impact of their research papers whereby ascertaining how often they are cited and used as a teaching tool. This can assist them when seeking further research funding since they would then have access to verifiable records to share with donors.

· How blockchain can help bring down the cost of education 
Blockchain technology has the potential to change the way education works by giving people new and cheaper ways to learn, as well as changing the way schools and students work together. Managing student tuition payments is a time-consuming process that involves many people: students, parents, scholarship foundations, private loan companies, federal and state institutions, and the often-huge bureaucracy of university financial departments. Blockchains can make this process more efficient, subsequently cutting down administrative costs and leading to lower tuition costs. Meanwhile, the technology has already been used for pay-as-you-go courses and other types of
open learning which rely on smart contracts and use cryptocurrency as a payment method. Of note, some universities in the US and other parts of the world have also started accepting cryptocurrency as tuition payment. The Economist claims that “the total amount of student loan debt in the US is more than $1.5 trillion.” Millions of people may be interested in options that make college more accessible and affordable, and blockchain technology could give more people access to open educational resources (teaching and learning materials in the public domain which are free to use and share) - the use of blockchain allows these resources to be shared on a public network. And since the processing of student ees can involve a number of parties such as students, donors, family, government agencies, and the universities themselves, this procedure can be streamlined using a common shared blockchain-powered ledger - potentially resulting in lower administrative costs and perhaps even lower tuition rates.

Core changes in education 

Source: McKinsey 

As McKinsey demonstrates above,education is shifting and the way in which people learn and interact with
educational establishments is altering. McKinsey also reports that: “From 2011 to2021, the number of learners reached by massive open online courses increased from 300,000 to220 million.” The growing demand for on-linedigitised courses presents challenges but also opens huge new markets for education establishments. The growing digitisation and remote learning with the need to track student results, course work and the need for greater transparency all help to make the use of blockchains more compelling.

· Using blockchain in university courses 

Blockchain has more of an effect on education than merely keeping records. The technology has the ability to change the way universities run their courses, and one aspect achieved by blockchains is that they can safely store digital syllabuses and coursework. To date, institutions have used hard drives for this, but they can potentially be broken or hacked. Using smart contracts and blockchains could also make workload management easier for teachers since smart contracts could automatically check each assignment and then give the student the next task until the syllabus is complete. The same smart contract technology could also be used to help teachers grade their students. Entire exams, including questions, answers, and scoring rules could be put into a blockchain following which a blockchain-powered platform could grade submissions. Using AI, the answers could be double-checked for plagiarism, etc, which, in turn, would certainly give teachers more time to work on other teaching-related tasks. The students’ scores would become a permanent part of their academic record (as well as the educational establishments’) to be safely stored on a blockchain. Blockchains can improve online education by making it easier to become accredited, so making the process notably transparent and accessible to those who have the relevant permissions.

Challenges of using blockchain in the education sector 
Interestingly, nearly half of the people in higher education who responded to the Gartner survey said they had no interest in using blockchain. Much of this reluctance may come from the problems of putting the technology in
place, such as security, scalability, adoption rate, and cost.

· Security - whilst security is one of blockchain's main features, that does not mean it cannot be broken. Institutions must be careful about storing data. In the US, complying with State and Federal data protection laws can be hard - not to mention the challenges of GDPR in Europe and the UK. Universities may need to establish more robust privacy measures and use private or permissioned blockchains by encrypting data on a blockchain.

· Scalability - educational institutions have large quantities of information about their students and alumni, which can make it hard for a blockchain to scale. As the amount of data involved increases, the number of blocks needed also grows. This slows down the speed of transactions on a blockchain since each transaction needs to be
checked by each peer. However, permissioned blockchains have a higher rate of transactions per second than permissionless blockchains and thus are able to handle larger amounts of data, faster. In any event, most of
the time a blockchain that is being used for educational purposes does not need to have an ultra-fast processing speed - unlike in the financial services sector where the processing of payments needs to ensure that the same digital assets is not sold/traded/used twice.

· Adoption rate - similar to other technologies before it, blockchain only works when enough institutions and employers trust it. Graduates can only use their credentials to their advantage if the schools or companies they wish to attend or work for accept them. But, with hundreds of schools already giving out and receiving blockchain
credentials and a network of job sites such as Upwork and ZipRecruiterpromoting their use, blockchains may soon be the norm rather than the exception.

· Cost - adopting and using new technology can be expensive, even if it saves money in other areas. Costs related to computing power and changes to existing infrastructure can accumulate. Furthermore, many institutions may not have the knowledge and skills to manage student data on a blockchain platform so they may have to spend money and time teaching school administrators about how to use the technology. However, as we have witnessed, there has been substantial growth in online education and remote learning, whilst opening up new markets for educators also presents challenges - some of which blockchain technology is able to help address.

Receive notifications about new blog posts and subscribe via the yellow subscribe button below 👇

This article first appeared in Digital Bytes (14th of December, 2022),
a weekly newsletter by Jonny Fry of Team Blockchain.