A Technology-driven Overview on Blockchain-based Academic Certificate Handling

Academic certificates have a significant influence on the job market, proving a particular competence or skill of a recipient. However, the ability to verify the authenticity of certificates does not follow its relevance in the labor market, causing several companies to exploit this inefficiency to falsify information or even to make fake certificates. In this context, several proposals based on blockchain appear as a technological alternative to increase the transparency and the ease of verification of these certificates. This chapter discusses the main proposals toward the handling of academic certificates from a technological point of view, discussing the technical aspects that may influence the relationship between confidentiality and transparency as well as application requirements such as performance and reliability in contrast to the blockchain characteristics. Finally, this chapter summarizes the key challenges and opportunities based on this discussion outlining future directions for academic certificate management.

Blockchain

Blockchain, having proved its commercial applications, is receiving increasing interest in the context of ODL system, which has flourished with the support of ICTs. ODL system cannot remain insulated from the associated potential risks of ignoring it and opportunities of embracing it. ODL institutions tend to gain competitive advantage by enhancing capabilities of combining resources. Intangible resources such as technological innovations are more strategically significant than tangible resources. ODL system is yet to taste the benefits of using blockchain. ODL institutions might use it as a resource to fill the gaps between needs, priorities, models, and practices for effective decision making anticipating future trends. The issue of considering it as a resource of competitive advantage for ODL system faces inadequacy of relevant literature. This chapter is an exploratory study considering blockchain as a resource of competitive advantage for ODL system. The significance of the chapter will be for the professionals, policymakers, researchers, governments, and regulators.

Blockchain Technology in Higher Education

Blockchain, which is also called a distributed ledger technology (DLT), is an emerging and ever advancing technology having flourishing potential for nourishing and revolutionizing higher education. It stems in decentralization and distributed learning with characteristics of permanence of records, pursuit and transfer of knowledge, authority of institutions, and reliability of teaching and learning. These characteristics of blockchain attract educational institutions particularly the higher education institutions to adopt it. However, in spite of all potential and benefits of blockchain technology, the higher education stakeholders currently seem to be less aware of the social benefits and educational/instructional potential of blockchain technology. It can be addressed through proper advocacy and campaign. The complete chapter will demonstrate possibilities of blockchain technologies in higher education along with its issues and challenges.

Change of the Learning Cycle After Blockchain

The purpose of this chapter is to create a foresight related to the role of using blockchain to meet the learning needs and how it may change learning cycle in 21st century. In this context, firstly explanation of the development of digital learning was given by describing the paradigm changes in lifelong learning activities. Learning needs of the 21st century were explained within the framework of constructivism and connectivism in terms of changes in learning tendencies. The problems encountered in the new learning tendencies were examined in the context of critical theory. Then to determine how the blockchain can respond to problems in learning, blockchain was defined, with its usage areas and the innovations it can bring to the field were interpreted. Finally learning and blockchain issues were synthesized, which are the focal point of this section, and how these can be used in learning applications, how they can respond to learning needs were discussed.

Blockchain in Education

Every individual undergoes a series of educational programs and acquires skills and pedagogical certifications throughout his/her life from various educational and skill development organisations across the world, including the companies they work for. It is imperative that there is a comprehensive record of these certifications that can be authentically verified by those wanting to employ the individual for these respective skills accredited through certifications. In this chapter, the authors explore the utility of blockchain technology-led digitization, automation of trust, and disintermediation in education sector. They examine some of the prominent use cases and challenges faced by blockchain technology. They also look at the current state of blockchain technology-enabled applications in related domains and its implications for the education sector in India along with a real-life illustration with implementation using AuxCert on Auxledger, a permissioned blockchain platform from Auxesis group.

Virtual Identity in Blockchain

Blockchain is a technology that helps produce virtual identities in the digital environment using the real identity and allows using these identities both in digital environment and in real environment. In a way, this has brought about a different dimension for the virtual identity concept and content produced in social network environments. Today, a blockchain-based virtual identity is no longer a really different identity; instead, it now has a form that allows individuals to produce and manage their virtual identities and facilitates their lives. In addition, its usage potential has led to the use of blockchain for institutional purposes. It is now possible for institutions to interact with their stakeholders via their institutional virtual identities. Virtual identities play an important facilitator role in communication to be established by educational institutions with their students especially at higher education level. The facilitator effects of technology in individuals' real lives will make important contributions to the usage potential of the blockchain technology.

Blockchain Applications in Lifelong Learning and the Role of the Semantic Blockchain

The emergence of the blockchain promises to revolutionise not only the financial world but also lifelong learning in various ways. Blockchain technology offers opportunities to thoroughly rethink how we find educational content and tutoring services online, how we register and pay for them, as well as how we get accredited for what we have learned and how this accreditation affects our career trajectory. This chapter explores the different aspects of lifelong learning that are affected by this new paradigm and describes an ecosystem that places the learner at the centre of the learning process and its associated data. This chapter also discusses the possibilities that will be afforded by the combination of trustworthy educational data enhanced with meaningful web-accessible linked data, and what these developments will mean for learners, educators, and the employment market.

Blockchaining Corporate Education

Michel Foucault wrote about education as a control system of the population. Roger Deacon is an Honorary Lecturer in education and Honorary Research Lecturer in politics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He is researching the relevance and implications of the work of Michel Foucault for education. All his remarks lead to concerns about the idea of blockchain for corporate education, as the life of an individual may be registered from the very beginning throughout the whole educational system. As choices, even computer-driven ones, are biased, chances of exclusion are higher than the opposite. Even the peer-to-peer system, designed to give people a chance to be fairly evaluated, with a blockchain system may be circumvented. In this scenario, how should one think about corporate education? Would it be an opportunity to reframe an individual with the right skills, or simply a way to build a uniform brigade? Maybe the multiple skills of collective games could indicate the need for multiple intelligences in order to keep a corporate performing well.

For an Open Innovation Platform Dedicated to Education

The innovation ecosystem dedicated to education in Brazil has been strengthened, but it is still far short of the needs of society and the potential that technology brings. The imperative of transformation is articulated by urgency—it is necessary to accelerate innovation—and by the comprehensiveness. Brazil's strategy of public financing to education would include new edtech products and services previously tested, validated, and priced by reverse auction made available in a national marketplace. It would be up to each municipality or school to define its priorities for the acquisition of technology products and services. Any software developed or made available by this open innovation platform should follow the guidelines of a free software. The training of teachers, managers, and staff would be an obligatory part of the adhesion, being primarily online. Students and their families would be included as potential users by a blockchain approach.

Framework Blockchain Education

We live in a dynamic and evolutionary world. Concepts such as internet of things, blockchain, convergence, transformations, disruptions, robotics, artificial intelligence, and learning analytics are increasingly becoming part of our lives. In the present chapter, the authors call attention to the higher education sector, which needs to go beyond the pedagogical and material limits in order to give to the student the protagonism of his/her life story. Rupture means to abstract the methods and models for living together in an environment of strong interactions and relationships, whose transactional cost becomes evident. Thus, this chapter presents a framework, which the authors titled framework blockchain education, in an ecosystem of changes, feeds, analyses, diagnostics, and intelligence, which contributes to the formation of the student according to his/her expectations, that is, to contribute in an effective manner in his/her achievement, while offering a sustainable education.