Abstract
This paper explores the promise of disruption of higher education offered by latest platform technologies—a combination of mobile applications for connecting teachers and students and blockchain technology for secure transactions of information and money. We start with a brief examination of several generations of technological disruptions arriving from the Silicon Valley with a special focus to educational technology. Showing that these disruptions are primarily focused to furthering capitalist mode of production, we question whether the latest disruption could provide different results. Advertised as “Uber for students, Airbnb for teachers”, the Woolf University offers the seductive promise of radical transformation of higher education based on cooperative principles. Our analysis, which is based on early ideas about the development of the Woolf University, indicates that it has the potentials to offer cooperative learning to students, cooperative employment to academic workers, all the while retaining highest quality of teaching and learning modelled after ancient scholastic principles. On that basis, we conclude that the Woolf University, together with other adaptations of blockchain technology for educational purposes, does offer a lot of potential for fundamental disruption of higher education and should be closely watched in the times to come.
Keywords
- Disruption
- Education
- Platform
- Blockchain
- Ideology
- Trust
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
References
ACT Foundation. (2016). Learning is earning. Retrieved October 14, 2019, from http://www.learningisearning2026.org
Baeza-Yates, R. (2016). Data and algorithmic bias in the web. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM Conference on Web Science – WebSci ’16. https://doi.org/10.1145/2908131.2908135
Broggi, J. D., Gallagher, M. A., Lilly, J., Duquette, J., Nimura, C., Pattenden, M., Richter, F., San Martín Arbide, L., Avin, S., Kelley, K., Lidova, M., Rodríguez-Pérez, D., & Winkler, A. (2018). Woolf: The first blockchain university. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://www.docdroid.net/ebIGXJm/whitepaper3.pdf
Chatfield, A. T. (2009). Public service reform through e-government: A case study of “e-Tax” in Japan. Electronic Journal of eGovernment, 7(2), 135–146.
Daniels, K., Lamond, D., & Standen, P. (2000). Managing telework. Business Press.
Gillespie, T. (2010). The politics of ‘platforms’. New Media and Society, 12(3), 347–364.
Goodyear, P., Banks, S., Hodgson, V., & McConnell, D. (Eds.). (2004). Advances in research on networked learning. Kluwer.
Hart, I. (2001). Deschooling and the Web: Ivan Illich 30 years on. Education Media International, 38(2–3), 69–76.
Hayes, S. (2015). MOOCs and quality: A review of the recent literature. Quality Assurance Agency. Retrieved October 12, 2019, from http://repositorio.minedu.gob.pe/bitstream/handle/123456789/4327/MOOCs%20and%20Quality%20A%20Review%20of%20the%20Recent%20Literature.pdf?sequence=1
Hayes, S. (2019). The labour of words in higher education: Is it time to reoccupy policy? Brill.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. Marion Boyars.
Jandrić, P. (2010). Wikipedia and education: Anarchist perspectives and virtual practices. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, 8(2), 48–73.
Jandrić, P. (2014). Deschooling virtuality. Open Review of Educational Research, 1(1), 84–98.
Jandrić, P. (2017). Learning in the age of digital reason. Sense.
Jandrić, P. (2018). Post-truth and critical pedagogy of trust. In M. A. Peters, S. Rider, M. Hyvönen, & T. Besley (Eds.), Post-truth, fake news: Viral modernity & higher education (pp. 101–111). Springer.
Jandrić, P. (2019). The postdigital challenge of critical media literacy. The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, 1(1), 26–37.
Jandrić, P., & Boras, D. (Eds.). (2015). Critical learning in digital networks. Springer.
Jones, C. (2015). Networked Learning: An Educational Paradigm for the Age of Digital Networks. Springer.
Kernohan, D. (2018). Hungry like the Woolf. Wonkhe, 12 April, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2019, from https://wonkhe.com/blogs/hungry-like-the-woolf-the-first-blockchain-university/
Knox, J. (2016). Posthumanism and the massive open online course: Contaminating the subject of global education. Routledge.
Networked Learning Editorial Collective. (2020). Networked learning: Inviting redefinition. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00167-8
Networked Learning Editorial Collective, et al. (2021). Networked learning in 2021: A community definition. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00222-y
O’Sullivan, F. (2018). Barcelona finds a way to control its Airbnb market. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/06/barcelona-finds-a-way-to-control-its-airbnb-market/562187/
O’Byrne, W. I. (2016). What is blockchain? Retrieved October 12, 2019, from https://medium.com/badge-chain/what-is-blockchain-5e4498f05c20#.v3yban5o7
Peters, M. A., Jandrić, P., & Hayes, S. (2019). The curious promise of educationalising technological unemployment: What can places of learning really do about the future of work? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 51(3), 242–254.
Platform Cooperative Consortium. (2019). Vision and advantages. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://platform.coop/about/vision-and-advantages/
Scholz, T. (2014). Platform cooperativism vs. the sharing economy. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad
Sellen, A. J., & Harper, R. H. R. (2003). The myth of the paperless office. The MIT Press.
Srnicek, N. (2016). Platform capitalism. Polity.
Teachonline. (2016). Uber-U is already here. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://teachonline.ca/tools-trends/exploring-future-education/uber-u-already-here
van Dijck, J., & Poell, T. (2018). Social media platforms and education. In J. Burgess, A. Marwick, & T. Poell (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of social media (pp. 579–591). SAGE.
Vander Ark, T. (2018). Imagining a blockchain university. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanderark/2018/06/13/woolf-building-the-first-blockchain-university/#596826b25ae5
Vidovich, L., & Currie, J. (2011). Governance and trust in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 36(1), 43–56.
Williamson, B. (2018). The hidden architecture of higher education: Building a big data infrastructure for the ‘smarter university’. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 15(1), 12.
Williamson, B. (2020). Making markets through digital platforms: Pearson, edu-business, and the (e)valuation of higher education. Critical Studies in Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2020.1737556
Williamson, B., Bayne, S., & Shay, S. (2020). The datafication of teaching in Higher Education: Critical issues and perspectives. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(4), 351–365.
Woolf University. (2019). Main. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://woolf.university/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jandrić, P., Hayes, S. (2021). The Blockchain University: Disrupting “Disruption”?. In: Dohn, N.B., Hansen, J.J., Hansen, S.B., Ryberg, T., de Laat, M. (eds) Conceptualizing and Innovating Education and Work with Networked Learning. Research in Networked Learning. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85241-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85241-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-85240-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-85241-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)