Inspiration
Blockchain is the core technology used to create the cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin. As part of the fourth industrial revolution since the invention of steam engine, electricity, and information technology, blockchain technology has been applied in many areas such as finance, judiciary, and commerce. The current paper focused on its potential educational applications and explored how blockchain technology can be used to solve some education problems. This article first introduced the features and advantages of blockchain technology following by exploring some of the current blockchain applications for education. Some innovative applications of using blockchain technology were proposed, and the benefits and challenges of using blockchain technology for education were also discussed.
What it does
What is blockchain? Blockchain technology is also known as distributed ledger technology. It allows participants to secure the settlement of transactions, achieve the transaction, and transfer of assets at a low-cost (Tschorsch and Scheuermann 2016). A sample flow of cryptocurrency blockchain transaction can be seen as follows. User A initiates a transaction to User B via a peer-to-peer blockchain network. A cryptographic proof of identity (a pair of public key and private) is used to the network to identify user A and user B uniquely. The transaction will then be broadcasted to the memory pool of the blockchain network waiting for transaction verification & validation. The new block is generated by obtaining a certain number of approved nodes; this is called reaching consensus. After reaching consensus, new “block” on the entire blockchain network is formed, and each node updates its respective copy of the blockchain ledger. This block contains all the transactions that occurred during this time. It is “linked” to the original block in the network through the digital signature (Yli-Huumo et al. 2016). The consensus stage is achieved through the use of a consensus algorithm. This process is called mining. Namely, Peer-to-Peer network reaches consensus on the current state of the distributed ledger (Kraft 2016). Each node can vote through its CPU power to accept valid blocks by taking extensions or reject invalid blocks by denying expansions. Any required rules and incentives can be implemented through this consensus mechanism (Nakamoto 2008). Each transaction in a block is tagged by a specific timestamp. The two blocks are also linked by a timestamp. Therefore, the data on the blockchain has a property of time, and the length of the chain is continuously growing. It means that blockchain is a distributed variant that implements the timestamp service (Haber and Stornetta 1991). Blockchain uses specialized hardware to construct sizeable cryptographic data chain, and SHA-256 hash function is used to prevent the tampering of data of third-party users (Tschorsch and Scheuermann 2016). Any attempt to change even just a bit of information will break the existing chains. In short, blockchain is a decentralized and trustworthy digital public ledger. It uses distributed techniques and consensus algorithms that were maintained by all participants.
Blockchain is not only a new type of internet infrastructure based on distributed applications but also a new type of supply chain network. Essentially, blockchain is a distributed network of computers (nodes) used to maintain the source of information sharing. Each node maintains the security and accuracy of the information by keeping a complete set of ledgers of past transactions. When a new block is being created by a miner, who is the first one to validate all the transactions in the block and solve the mathematical problem by generating a digital signature for the block which meets a pre-defined rule using the hash function. The newly created block will be broadcasting to the whole blockchain network, allowing all nodes to maintain the same complete ledger (Tschorsch and Scheuermann 2016).
Consensus mechanism is achieved through three major verification mechanisms. Bitcoin uses a verification mechanism called Proof of Work (Nakamoto 2008). The miners are nodes working in a blockchain peer-to-peer network. Their task is to validate all transactions included in one block and solve the mathematical problem of the digital signature using a hash function. The miners compete with each other, and once someone solves the problem, the solution will be shared with other mining nodes. The winning miner receives additional bitcoins as rewards. Other miners accept the Proof of Work, and the new block will be added to the blockchain network (Fanning and Centers 2016). Ethereum has four development stages, including Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, and Serenity. The first three stages use the verification mechanism of Proof of Work, and the fourth stage uses Proof of Stake. The Proof of Stake requires the certifier to show the ownership of a certain amount of cryptocurrency (Sharples and Domingue 2016). “Proof of Zero Knowledge” is the consensus mechanism used in Zcash which can provide better privacy to its users. Compared with other verification mechanisms, Proof of Zero Knowledge has improved both regarding functionality and efficiency (Tschorsch and Scheuermann 2016).
How we built it
From the technical point of view, blockchain technology has four features: decentralization, traceability, immutability, and currency properties.
Decentralization refers to the processes of data verification, storage, maintenance, and transmission on blockchain which are based on a distributed system structure. In this structure, the trust between distributed nodes is built through mathematical methods rather than the centralized organizations.
Traceability means that all transactions on blockchain are arranged in chronological order, and a block is connected with two adjacent blocks by the cryptographic hash function. Therefore, every transaction is trackable by examining the block information linked by hash keys.
There are two reasons that blockchain technology is immutable. On the one hand, all transactions are stored in blocks with one hash key linking from the previous block and one hash key pointing to the next block. Tampering with any transaction would result in different hash values and would thus be detected by all the other nodes running precisely the same validation algorithm. On the other hand, blockchain is a shareable public ledger stored on thousands of node, and all ledgers continue to sync in real time. Successful tampering would need to change over 51% of the ledgers stored in the network (Tschorsch and Scheuermann 2016).
Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are inseparable, that is to say, any blockchain network has a form cryptocurrency property. The essence of blockchain technology is point-to-point transactions, no third party is involved, which means that all transactions do not require the participation of third parties. Circulation of digital currency based on blockchain technology is fixed. Specifically, in Bitcoin, the currency base is set at 21 million caps, so the generation of digital currency is created by using a specific mining algorithm and is bounded by a pre-defined formula. Thus there won’t be the problem of inflation, collapse and so on. In Blockchain 2.0 and 3.0 applications, the combination of other activities such as government activities, educational activities, and financial activities can make these non-financial activities have the property of currency.
Challenges we ran into
Accomplishments that we're proud of
What we learned
Present blockchain applications in education Nowadays, some universities and institutes have applied blockchain technology into education, and most of them use it to support academic degree management and summative evaluation for learning outcomes (Sharples and Domingue 2016; Skiba 2017).
Blockchain technology can formulate the whole transcript. In the formal learning context, this includes learning contents and outcomes as well as students’ achievements and academic certificates. Subsequently, in the informal learning context, information about research experience, skills, online learning experience as well as individual interests are included. These data can be safely stored and accessed on a blockchain network in appropriate ways. The University of Nicosia is the first school which uses blockchain technology to manage students’ certificates received from MOOC platforms (Sharples and Domingue 2016). Sony Global Education also used the blockchain technology to create a global assessment platform to provide services for storing and managing degree information (Hoy 2017). Additionally, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Learning Machine company cooperated to design a digital badge for online learning based on blockchain technology. Students who have attended the projects of MIT Media Lab and passed the assessment will receive a certification which will be stored on a blockchain network (Skiba 2017). What’s more, Holberton School is the first institute applying blockchain technology to store degrees and has claimed that they would share this information from 2017. The blockchain ledger can match all kinds of educational information with the user’s unique ID. It includes learning behavior in class, micro academic project experience, and macro educational background, etc.
Moreover, blockchain technology contributes to reducing degree fraud. In the past, there were numerous cases of degree fraud. However, it can be avoided by employing blockchain in granting and managing student’s degree now. The data matched with users’ ID and stored in blockchain are checked, validated, and maintained by the miners from all over the world. Blockchain distributed ledger is immutable and trustworthy. Thus, the reliability and authority are both ensured, which will significantly reduce degree fraud.
Also, blockchain can be used as a “capacity-currency transformation bank.” Specifically, blockchain learning ledger records detailed information about the users’ learning experience and follows the development of their knowledge and skills. All of them can be transformed into a sort of digital currency and stored on a blockchain network according to a series of comprehensive standards. Students will gain rewards through their efforts on studies, which is called “learning is earning” (Sharples and Domingue 2016). Some schools have also started the application with this concept, for example, Sharples and Domingue (2016) claimed a kind of Education Reputation Currency named Kudos. It can be used to measure learning outcomes and stored in a virtual wallet.
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