Blockchain and its applications in education
Applying Blockchain technology in education is a means of providing affordable, equitable and quality educational content on a global scale.
It has been long recognised that improving the quality of life of populations entails an investment in Education. Indeed, UNESCO has set an objective of providing free digitised teaching and learning materials (known as open educational resources) which is key to sustainable development with a goal of ensuring the inclusive and equitable quality of education and providing lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Applying Blockchain technology in education is a means of providing affordable, equitable and quality educational content on a global scale.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, educational institutions have quickly adapted to online learning and are now examining their long-term strategies for the benefit of all stakeholders in the education system; universities, employers and of course, students. Online learning is here to stay, perhaps in various formats which will be blended with classroom learning. This irreversible change facilitates the adoption of blockchain synergies in creating robust and open educational resources.
Open educational resources substantially reduce the cost of educational content for students, providing timeless access to quality content which enhances the learning experience. These resources are not just textbooks or lessons but also include content such as videos, application simulations and podcasts.
Blockchain being a digital ledger or database, is distributed in a network and is decentralised and not controlled by any central authority. Thus, in education, this has immense benefits for all the stakeholders mentioned. So, open educational resources are the “blocks” in the “chain” that can be securely and effectively shared in a public network. Thus, students can, therefore “own” their lifelong learning data such as credentials, skills learned etc which were hitherto controlled by a central authority in the University. Also, for employers, authentic information about the student is ensured as the student cannot alter past educational certification stored on the blockchain, while that can easily be altered with paper records. The data being in encrypted form also allows for the maintenance of privacy
This feature has benefits for teachers too! As the blocks of the chain cannot be altered, the original creator can always be determined irrespective of how many iterations the resource has undergone, thereby overcoming plagiarism concerns. The implication of this is that resources created with blockchain have a certain permanence online that preserves all content adaptations. All teaching-learning resources are preserved as blockchain records and are thus secured and permanent. This is an important feature particularly if an institution closes down or if the creator of the resource moves on to work elsewhere or retires!
The most important dimension of using blockchain is that it helps to overcome the stumbling block of many quality open educational resources that are hard to find on the web. To date, there is still no efficient method of disseminating open educational resources that offer maximum accessibility. Blockchain can effectively support accessibility to open educational resources in publicly available and distributed global knowledge databases.
The only downside one can see is that the blockchain is vulnerable to unexpected failures and it is also plausible that unwanted, fake, unscientific and illegal content is added to the blockchain accidentally or maliciously. These cannot be removed. In addition, the quickness with which this can be implemented and the cost of creating and maintaining the blockchain are also major concerns.
The author is Prof. Ravi Kumar, Adjunct Faculty in the area of Finance, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Bengaluru.
Disclaimer: This content is distributed by SRV Media. No HT journalist is involved in the creation of this content.
