
“Live as you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”This quote from Mahatma Gandhi is one of my favorite quotes and it may be something that everyone should live by. In a world of a constant, fast-paced change to keep up with everything we need to adapt and learn new things every day.


What Can Blockchain Bring to the Educational Systems?
There currently exists a great amount of fraud when it comes to educational achievements. The blockchain technology could provide an online, secure, distributed, tamper-proof database for storing certificates, badges, achievements, and qualifications. This data could be open to everyone to view and the system would guarantee the validity of the certification. It could be applied to individual schools, at an institutional level, and even a national or international level. As an answer to fake certificates and false resumes, Holberton School in San Francisco became the first school in the world to store and issue their certificates by using a blockchain system. The school uses the Bitcoin blockchain making the certificates’ content completely sealed and tamper-proof. Besides a paper certificate, every graduate also receives a digital certificate number (DCN). When applying for apprenticeship or job, every graduate can include their DCN in their resume so that their potential future employer can verify the certificate’s validity. Not long after the Holberton School’s example, MIT Media Lab revealed the code behind their project for creating, sharing, verifying, and issuing certificates, all by using the Bitcoin blockchain. They published an extensive and detailed article, explaining the whole process that occurs behind-the-scenes of their project and encouraging further discussion and experiments. Today, the platform evolved into Blockcerts and it’s already used by hundreds of organizations and educational institutions. If you’re in doubt of why Blockcerts should be used and how individuals can benefit from it, make sure to read this article.
“Blockchain offers a new approach to how the life history of data related to a person, place or thing is shared and managed. In effect, data tracked on a blockchain becomes a single source of truth” — words coming from Yoshiki Minowa, the Vice President, Partner — Cognitive Process Transformation, Global Business Services, IBM Japan.Woolf is a startup whose primary goal is to build a borderless university. The startup aims to revolutionize education and it was formed by Oxford professors. They created an educational platform by using the blockchain technology to ensure students’ data security and to remove any fraud possibilities. One other important issue that the platform addresses is that a student can earn a degree from a faculty that later goes out of business. The risk of the validity of that certificate exists but having the data stored securely in the blockchain removes the risk and provides validation. Also, by removing intermediaries and adding the automation, the platform cuts down the costs of the administrative procedures that are otherwise present. The check-ins used by both students and teachers execute smart contracts which provide validation of lesson attendance and the completion of an assignment. The first school on the platform is the Ambrose University which offers digital tutorials given at the Oxford University. Another great benefit that the Ambrose University introduced is the ability for students and teachers outside of EU to join the platform and acquire an EU degree.
Other Potential Application of Blockchain in Education
Open Badges is the largest badges platform, today used by thousands of educational institutions, government agencies, employers, online courses, non-profits etc. An earned Open Badge will surely end up on a candidate’s LinkedIn profile and/or CV. The platform itself enjoys a high level of reputation and trust but wouldn’t there be an even great layer of trust and security if all the badges were stored and issued entirely through the blockchain technology? Open Badges and MIT Media Lab’s aforementioned Blockcerts application working together surely sounds great, right? There have already been a few experiments with Open Badges and blockchain (OpenLearn platform) and I’m looking forward to what the future brings. Let’s not forget the gamification! The first form of learning plays which we all experience as children. Blockchain in EdTech can be used to reinforce learning by gamification and reward systems through tokens for new knowledge that is acquired or shared. And what about incentivization of educational content creation? There is a wide area that can be explored when it comes to using Blockchain to support and incentivize the creation and sharing of information or knowledge content. Knowledge creators can be rewarded for their input and the community can rate the content. Blockchain technology allows for knowledge creation and it’s used for tracking and distribution of rewards. A fantastic example can be found in the Knowledge.io platform.
Final Thoughts
Having a decentralized and secured certificates database sounds like an approach worthy of the democratized and diversified education that we have today. Many educational institutions rely only on their reputation as the proof behind the validity of their certificates. With the fast-paced changes that we experience with each new year, will it be enough? There’s no definitive answer to this but the technology that can provide a trustworthy system on top of the institution’s reputation does exist. And that technology is Blockchain. This article is part of our blockchain awareness posts where we try to help newcomers and people interested in blockchain use cases enter the space more easily. Follow us and subscribe for more upcoming articles such as this one, and feel free to join the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn. For free business consultation about how blockchain can impact and change your business model, or anything else related to the technology — get in touch with us.Exploring Blockchain in Education was originally published in MVP Workshop on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.