Blockchain - The Future of Education is Here for Uni Student Records
by Sarmad Friday November 5th 2021
One Australian University is trialing Blockchain technology, revolutionizing the student qualification process.
Blockchain technology is a Game-Changer in many Industries and now Universities and other Education organisations are adopting the technology.
Blockchain offers the potential to revolutionize the student qualification process. It can be used in a variety of ways, such as verifying qualifications and academic records, securely storing information, transferring data in an intuitive and accessible way.
What is blockchain and how does it work?
The term "blockchain" has been used to refer to two different things:
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A data structure, a specific format for organizing and storing digital data,
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and a computer system, which is the outcome of a collective effort.
The execution of a specific software across a network of computers, on the other hand, the blockchain data structure.
On the one hand, there's a chain of blocks comparable to the linked list typically taught to computer science students. Students of science, on the other hand, the blockchain system is the distributed execution of a common task. A cluster of computers, often located in separate places and connected by a communication network, creates software. Instead of a reliable and central computer
The University of Melbourne first in Australia to use blockchain for student records
The University of Melbourne will soon test blockchain technology to record student credentials, allowing users to share certified copies of their credentials with companies and other third parties in a tamper-proof system. This will be an Australian first.
The institution is one of the first in the world to test the technology, which will be used this year in an internal course called the Melbourne Teaching Certificate, which is designed to help academics enhance their teaching abilities.
Learning Machine developed the blockchain technology in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.
According to Natalie Smolenski of Learning Machine, five to ten colleges throughout the world and several professional organizations and businesses are testing blockchain credentialing technologies.
Blockchain is widely expected to revolutionize the way people record their educational achievements and professional work experience due to its capacity to create a secure and verifiable record of events that cannot be altered.
Gregor Kennedy, pro-vice-chancellor (teaching and learning) at the University of Melbourne, said the project put the university at the forefront of emerging technology. He believes it will be expanded to include more courses given by the university's Centre for Study of Higher Education next year.
Granular level
Employers wanted to verify employees' talents at a very granular level, he added, while students wanted to demonstrate the exact skills and competencies they had gained.
"Micro-credentials, confirmed through secure, distributed platforms like Learning Machine's, are one way to address this," he explained.
According to Dr Smolenski, blockchain users can download an app that allows them to ask educational institutions to submit their credentials. Users could choose which other organizations they wanted to share their information with. Other users who received the credentials can perform a fast verification check to ensure that they are valid.
Other universities interested
Deakin University is also considering implementing blockchain technology. The university's deputy vice-chancellor (academic), Beverley Oliver, stated they were testing the utility of blockchain on their Internet of Things platform.
"We are studying the use of blockchain in a wide range of services, from digital identification to payments to academic records, based on the learnings and prototypes to date," she said.
Marnie Hughes-Warrington, deputy vice-chancellor (academic) at the Australian National University (ANU), stated blockchain had interesting applications for institutions in administration, credentialing, and credit transfer.
She remarked that it was surprised that higher education institutions had waited so long to test blockchain applications. However, the ANU is not doing so at the moment since it is focusing on the equal's scheme, which allows graduates to authorize employers, professional bodies, and other universities to access their credentials online.
A DECADE OF EVOLUTION
The blockchain system has already progressed through several vital stages or generations, each with additional and more advanced functions. The following are the several generations of the blockchain evolution:
BLOCKCHAIN 1.0
These blockchain systems allow users to transfer digital assets between participants by issuing transactions written in a restricted programming language. Miners add new transactions to the chain by encapsulating them in blocks. When miners append separate blocks to the same index, the blockchain forks, requiring the miners to establish a consensus afterwards.
BLOCKCHAIN 2.0
Users can upload intelligent contracts to the blockchain and invoke them. Smart contracts are broad programmes that offer more expressiveness to users than transactions. The emergence of smart contracts gave rise to the concept of decentralized applications (DApps), which interact with the blockchain data structure and can often be accessed using a browser.
BLOCKCHAIN 3.0
This third generation of blockchains includes newer blockchain systems that attempt to improve scalability, interoperability, governance, privacy, or sustainability. This generation features blockchains that work better with an interactive web version.
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