A technical abstract of applying blockchain to the education community. The teachers, students, curriculum, and certification exams are all on trusted blockchain.
ABSTRACT
The properties of a blockchain such as immutability, provenance, and peer-executed smart contracts could bring a new level of security, trust, and transparency to e-learning. In this paper, we introduce our proof-of-concept blockchain-based e-learning platform developed to increase transparency in assessments and facilitate curriculum personalization in a higher education context. Most notably, our platform could automate assessments and issue credentials. We designed it to be pedagogically neutral and content-neutral in order to showcase the benefits of a blockchain back-end to end users such as students and teaching staff. Our evaluation suggests that our platform could increase trust in online education providers, assessment procedures, education history and credentials.
If you wan to read the entire 20 page paper, you will need to pay for it. The bottom line here is educational certification in third world countries is rife with cheating. “Smart Contracts” embedded into blockchain technology allow educators to ensure a student is meeting the requirements for their educational path, that they test to the requirements, and the student is the one who passes those requirements. All this activity is publicly available for any to view and/or audit.