Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Platform Utilising Blockchain Technology for eLearning and Online Education for Open Sharing of Academic Proficiency and Progress Records

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Smart Data Intelligence

Part of the book series: Algorithms for Intelligent Systems ((AIS))

Abstract

This is a preliminary study of the present status of blockchain adoption in the educational sector. The aim of this study is to increase public awareness of blockchain technology whilst emphasising the advantages, risks, difficulties, and hazards associated with its use in educational contexts. This article further analyses the fundamental technological principles and application characteristics of blockchain technology and proposes a blockchain-based solution to the issues associated with online education. Through the use of blockchain technology, a student’s accomplishments may be monitored more precisely whilst remaining anonymous. Additionally, this ensures that companies have trustworthy digital certificates that safeguard their intellectual property whilst allowing for learning via the use of intelligent contracts. According to the findings, blockchain technology has tremendous potential for improving education in general, and online education in particular. The study’s findings shall inspire the creation of a decentralised online education system.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 229.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 299.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 299.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Hoy MB (2017) An introduction to the Blockchain and its implications for libraries and medicine. Med Ref Serv Q 36(3):273–279. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763869.2017.1332261

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Myburgh T, Myburgh S, Tammaro M (2013) Exploring education for digital librarians. Chandos Publishing, p 334

    Google Scholar 

  3. Beck R, Czepluch JS, Lollike N, Malone S (2016) Blockchain—the gateway to trust-free cryptographic transactions. In: Research papers from ECIS2016, (Istanbul, 2016)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Chen G, Xu B, Lu M, Chen N-S (2018) Exploring blockchain technology and its potential applications for ‘education. Smart Learn Environ 5. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40561-017-0050-x

  5. Curmi A, Inguanez F (2019) BlockChain based certificate verification platform. In: Abramowicz W, Paschke A (eds) Business information systems workshops. BIS 2018. Lecture notes in business information processing, vol 339, pp 211–216. https://frankieinguanez.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/curmi_axel.pdf

  6. Kraft D (2016) Difficulty control for blockchain-based consensus systems. Peer Peer Netw Appl 9(2):397–413. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12083-015-0347-x

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Grech A, Camilleri AF (2017) Blockchain in education. Joint Research Centre (JRC), p 134. https://doi.org/10.2760/60649

  8. Green NC, Edwards H, Wolodko B, Stewart C, Brooks M, Littledyke R (2010) Re-conceptualising higher education pedagogy in online learning. Dist Educ 31(3):257–273

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Guo J, Li C, Zhang G, Sun Y, Bie R (2020) Blockchain-enabled digital rights management for multimedia resources of online education. Multimed Tools Appl 79:9735–9755. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-019-08059-1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Wang H, Chen K, Xu D (2016) A maturity model for blockchain adoption. Financ Innov 2(1):12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40854-016-0031-z

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Kosba A, Miller A, Shi E, Wen Z, Papamanthou C (2016) In: 2016 IEEE symposium on security and privacy (SP). Hawk: the blockchain model of cryptography and privacy-preserving smart contracts, pp 839–858. https://doi.org/10.1109/SP.2016.55

  12. Bandara I, Ioras F, Arraiza M (2018) The emerging trend of blockchain for vali-dating degree apprenticeship certification in cyber security education. INTED 2018 proceedings, pp 7677–7683. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2018.1828

  13. Castañeda L, Selwyn N (2018) More than tools? Making sense of the ongoing digitizations of higher education. Int J Educ Technol Higher Educ 15(22). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0109-y

  14. Alammary A, Alhazmi S, Almasri M, Gillani S (2019) Blockchain-based applications in education: a systematic review. Appl Sci 9(12):2400

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Scott D, Mota R (2014) Education for innovation and independent learning. Elsevier, p 168

    Google Scholar 

  16. Budhiraja S, Rani R (2020) TUDoc chain-securing academic certificate digitally on blockchain. In: Smys S, Bestak R, Rocha Á (eds) Inventive computation technologies. ICICIT. Lecture notes in networks and systems, vol 98, pp 150–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33846-6_17

  17. Capetillo A (2018) Blockchained education: challenging the longstanding model of academic institutions. Eur J Contemp Educ 9(3):569

    Google Scholar 

  18. Hameed B, Murad Khan M, Noman A et al (2019) A review of blockchain based educational projects. Int J Adv Comput Sci Appl (IJACSA) 10(10):491–499. https://doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2019.0101065

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Kamišalić A, Turkanović M, Mrdović S, Heričko M (2019) A preliminary review of blockchain-based solutions in higher education. In: Uden L, Liberona

    Google Scholar 

  20. Kirilova D, Maslov N, Astakhova T (2018) Prospects for the introduction of block-chain technology into a modern system of education. Int J Open Inf Technol 6(8):31–36

    Google Scholar 

  21. Devine P (2015) Blockchain learning: can crypto-currency methods be appropriated to enhance online learning? ALT Online Winter Conference: 7–10. https://oro.open.ac.uk/44966/8/Devine2015-altc-blockchainlearning-transcript.pdf

  22. Collins R (2016) Blockchain: a new architecture for digital content. EContent 39(8):22–23

    Google Scholar 

  23. Rashid M, Deo K, Prasad D, Singh K, Chand S, Assaf M (2019) TEduChain: a platform for crowdsourcing tertiary education fund using blockchain technology. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.06327.pdf

  24. Turkanović M, Hölbl M, Košič K, Heričko M, Kamišalić A (2018) EduCTX: a block-chain-based higher education credit platform. IEEE Access 6:5112–5127

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Selingo J (2017) The future of the degree: how colleges can survive the new credential economy. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.pearson.com/content/dam/one-dot-com/one-dot-com/us/en/files/The-Fu-ture-OftheDegree-2017.pdf

  26. Skiba DJ (2017) The potential of Blockchain in education and health care. Nurs Educ Perspect 38(4):220–221. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000190

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  27. Durant E (2017) Digital diploma debuts at MIT. Using Bitcoin’s blockchain technology, the Institute has become one of the first universities to issue recipient-owned virtual credentials. http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-debuts-secure-digitaldiploma-us-ing-bitcoin-blockchain-technology-1017

  28. Tschorsch F, Scheuermann B (2016) Bitcoin and beyond: a technical survey on decentralized digital currencies. IEEE Commun Surv Tutorials 18(3):2084–2123. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2016.2535718

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Kontzinos C, Markaki O, Kokkinakos P, Karakolis V, Skalidakis S, Psarras J (2019) University process optimisation through smart curriculum design and block-chain-based student accreditation. In: 18th international conference on WWW, pp 93–100. https://doi.org/10.33965/icwi2019_201913L012

  30. Kosba A, Miller A, Shi E, Wen Z, Papamanthou C (2015) Hawk: the Blockchain model of cryptography and privacy-preserving smart contracts. https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/675.pdf

  31. Li Y, Liang X, Zhu X, Wu B (2018) A blockchain-based autonomous credit system. In: 15th international conference on e-Business engineering (ICEBE). IEEE, pp 178–186

    Google Scholar 

  32. Huynh TT, Huynh TT, Pham DK, Ngo AK (2018) Issuing and verifying digital certificates with blockchain. In: 2018 international conference on advanced technologies for communications (ATC). IEEE, pp 332–336

    Google Scholar 

  33. Yli-Huumo J, Ko D, Choi S, Park S, Smolander K (2016) Where is current research on Block-chain technology?—a systematic review. PLoS ONE 11(10):e0163477. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163477

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Jirgensons M, Kapenieks J (2018) Blockchain and the future of digital learning credential assessment and management. J Teach Educ Sustain 20(1):145–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Fanning K, Centers DP (2016) Blockchain and its coming impact on financial services. J Corp Account Finance 27(5):53–57. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22179

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Schwab K (2017) The fourth industrial revolution. The Crown Publishing Group, New York City, NY

    Google Scholar 

  37. Lizcano D, Lara JA, White B, Aljawarneh S (2019) Blockchain-based approach to cre-ate a model of trust in open and ubiquitous higher education. J Comput High Educ 32(1):109–134

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Nakamoto S (2008) Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Retrieved from https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

  39. Sharples M, Domingue J (2016) The blockchain and kudos: a distributed system for educational record, reputation and reward. In: European conference on technology enhanced learning. Springer, Cham, pp 490–496

    Google Scholar 

  40. Sharples M, Roock R, Ferguson R, Gaved M, Herodotou C, Koh E, Kukulska-Hulme A, Looi C-K, McAndrew P, Rienties B, Weller M, Wong LH (2016) Innovating pedagogy 2016. Open University innovation report 5

    Google Scholar 

  41. Tomczyk L, Oyelere SS, Puentes A, Sanchez-Castillo G, Muñoz D, Simsek B, Akyar OY, Demirhan G (2019) Flipped learning, digital storytelling as the new solutions in adult education and school pedagogy. In: Veteška J (ed) Adult education—transformation in the era of digitization and artificial intelligence. Czech Andragogy So-ciety, Prague

    Google Scholar 

  42. Zheng Z, Xie S, Dai H, Chen X, Wang H (2017) IEEE international congress on big data (BigData congress). An Overview of Blockchain Technology: Architecture, Con-sensus, and Future Trends 2017:557–564. https://doi.org/10.1109/BigDataCon-gress.2017.85

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Chung M, Kim J (2016) The internet information and technology research directions based on the fourth industrial revolution. KSII Trans Internet Inf Syst 10(3):1311–1320

    Google Scholar 

  44. Peck M (2016) A blockchain currency that beat s bitcoin on privacy. IEEE Spectr 53(12):11–13. https://doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.2016.7761864

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Nakamoto S (2008) Bitcoin: a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

  46. Nespor J (2019) Cyber schooling and the accumulation of school time. Pedagog Cult Soc 3:325–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2018.1489888

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Ocheja P, Flanagan B, Ueda H, Ogata H (2019) Managing lifelong learning records through blockchain. Res Pract Technol Enhanced Learn 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-019-0097-0

  48. Oyelere SS, Tomczyk L, Bouali N, Agbo FJ (2019) Blockchain technology and gamification—conditions and opportunities for education. In: Veteška J (ed) Adult education—transformation in the era of digitization and artificial intelligence. Andragogy Society, Prague

    Google Scholar 

  49. Devine P (2015) Blockchain learning: can crypto-currency methods be appropriated to en-hance online learning? Presented at the ALT online winter conference 2015, Online, United Kingdom

    Google Scholar 

  50. Sharples M, Domingue J (2016) The Blockchain and Kudos: a distributed system for educational record, reputation and reward. Adaptive and adaptable learning. Springer, Cham, pp 490–496. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45153-4_48

  51. Swan M (2015) Blockchain: blueprint for a new economy, 1st edn. O’Reilly Media, Sebas-topol, CA

    Google Scholar 

  52. Vukolić M (2015) The quest for scalable blockchain fabric: proof-of-work vs. BFT replication. Open problems in network security. Springer, Cham, pp 112–125. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39028-4_9

  53. Haber S, Stornetta WS (1991) How to time-stamp a digital document. J Cryptol 3(2):99–111. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00196791

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  54. Arenas R, Fernandez P (2018) CredenceLedger: a permissioned blockchain for verifiable academic credentials. In: IEEE international conference on engineering, technology and innovation. IEEE, pp 1–6

    Google Scholar 

  55. Underwood, blockchain beyond bitcoin. Commun ACM 59(11):15–17. https://doi.org/10.1145/2994581

  56. Sanchez G, Rodríguez-González S (eds) Learning technology for education challenges. Commun Comput Inf Sci 1011:114–124. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20798-4_11

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Rekhi Centre of Excellence for the Science of Happiness, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India

    Ashraf Alam

Authors
  1. Ashraf Alam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ashraf Alam .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Kongunadu College of Engineering and Technology, Tholurpatti, India

    R. Asokan

  2. School of Information Technology and Telecommunications Engineering, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Diego P. Ruiz

  3. Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, VIC, Australia

    Zubair A. Baig

  4. Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM), University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Selwyn Piramuthu

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Alam, A. (2022). Platform Utilising Blockchain Technology for eLearning and Online Education for Open Sharing of Academic Proficiency and Progress Records. In: Asokan, R., Ruiz, D.P., Baig, Z.A., Piramuthu, S. (eds) Smart Data Intelligence. Algorithms for Intelligent Systems. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3311-0_26

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation