An Overview of Blockchain for Higher Education
Timothy Arndt
a
Department of Information Systems, Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH, 44118, U.S.A.
Keywords: Blockchain, Higher Education, Certification, Smart Contract.
Abstract: Blockchain technology is one of the most widely acclaimed technologies of recent years. It enables the
creation of distributed applications involving multiple actors or organizations in which transactions and data
are not under the control of a central authority. Transactions are stored in a distributed public ledger in an
immutable format in such a way that they can be verified by participants. This disintermediation promises to
remove much of the “friction” (and lower costs) from distributed transactions by cutting out the intermediary
party, thus enabling a variety of applications in finance, government, health, etc. This paper provides an
overview of recent research in the application of blockchain technology to higher education for those who are
interested in working in this area or just understanding how higher education may be positively impacted in
the future by blockchain.
1 INTRODUCTION
Blockchain was introduced in a paper published by
the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008
(Nakamoto, 2008) and subsequently deployed in the
cryptocurrency bitcoin in the following year.
Blockchain is an open, distributed ledger that can
efficiently record transactions between two parties in
a verifiable and immutable (permanent) fashion
without the need for a trusted third party
(disintermediation).
Bitcoin uses a peer-to-peer architecture and
relies on proof-of-work, a piece of data which is
difficult (time consuming, computationally) to
produce, but easy for others to verify (via “miners”
who are rewarded with bitcoin for this work) and
which satisfies certain requirements as a consensus
mechanism. Consensus mechanisms allow for the
correctness or “truth” of a transaction to be confirmed
(depending on a set of rules) when multiple
distributed actors may perform transactions, and
some of those actors may be untrustworthy.
Blockchain thus leads to what have been called
Distributed Autonomous Organisations (DAOs).
Subsequent developments have allowed
blockchain to be programmed (via smart contracts) to
trigger transactions automatically (Iansiti and
Lakhani, 2017). As a foundational technology,
a
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6451-9918
blockchain has been used or proposed for use in
applications far beyond cryptocurrencies (Arndt,
2018), including banking (Peters and Panayi, 2016),
land registration especially in developing countries
(Underwood, 2016), insurance (Lamberti, F., et al.,
2017), and online voting (Ayed, 2017). Alternative
consensus mechanisms (such as proof of stake and
mechanisms based on Byzantine Fault Tolerance)
have been proposed and alternative architectures used
(e.g. client-server). These variations may be more
useful in specific applications of blockchain. Some of
these variations and blockchain platforms using them
are discussed in the following section.
In this position paper, we give an overview of
some recent research on the application of blockchain
in the area of higher education, and our thoughts on
that research, for those who may be interested in
starting research in the area or who are interested in
understanding what is going there to see how it may
impact higher education in the future. As a position
paper, we make no claims to this being an exhaustive
review of research in the area. To dig deeper,
(Yumna, 2019) and (Yokubov, 2018) (related works
section) will be helpful. The best way to incorporate
the topic of blockchain into the higher education
curriculum for various academic disciplines
(computer science, information systems, finance,
business, etc.) is another interesting question, but is
not addressed by the research surveyed here.
Arndt, T.
An Overview of Blockchain for Higher Education.
DOI: 10.5220/0008343902310235
In Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K 2019), pages 231-235
ISBN: 978-989-758-382-7
Copyright
c
2019 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
231
2 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
2.1 Types of Blockchain
There are currently three generally recognized types
of blockchain systems which differ in governance and
architecture (Zheng, 2017):
Public Blockchain all records are visible to the
public and everyone can take part in the consensus
process. Immutability is high in this type of
blockchain, but efficiency is low;
Private Blockchain belong to a specific
organization, and only nodes coming from that
organization are allowed to join the consensus
process. Compared to public blockchains, private
blockchains have lower immutability, but higher
efficiency;
Consortium Blockchain a combination of the
two previous types of system in which a pre-
selected group of users can participate in the
consensus process, and not all users belong to the
same organization. Immutability and efficiency
are similar to the private blockchain, while
consortium blockchain is intermediate in terms of
centralization between the decentralized public
blockchain and centralized private blockchain.
This type is also known as a permissioned
blockchain.
2.2 When Is Blockchain Useful?
Blockchain is a highly hyped, perhaps overhyped,
technology. It is not applicable to all projects.
Relational databases are a more stable, longer
established technology which meet the needs of
many, if not most, projects. On the other hand, there
are certain usage scenarios in which blockchain may
be applied. A good set of guidelines for when
blockchain may usefully be integrated into a project
has been given by (Greenspan, 2015). Specifically,
blockchain may be useful if the following conditions
hold:
Shared Database the project will require a
database to be used as a shared ledger;
Multiple Writers more than one entity will be
generating transactions which will be modifying
the database. Further, the writers will hold a copy
of the database and relay transactions in a peer-to-
peer fashion;
Absence of Trust users are not willing to allow
other users to modify the database entries which
they own;
Disintermediation the multiple non-trusting
entities want to operate without a centralized
trusted intermediary;
Transaction Interaction the transactions of
different users depend on those of others;
Set of Rules given the previous conditions, it is
logical that the database should embed rules
which restrict the transactions;
Authoritative Transaction Log the blockchain
serves as the final transaction log on whose
contents all users provably agree;
Asset Store the blockchain serves as a ledger of
real-world assets.
If all or most of these conditions hold, blockchain
technology may well be applicable and useful for
your project. Some reflection will show that many use
cases in education have these conditions. The projects
surveyed in the next chapter are examples of these
types of higher education use cases.
2.3 Blockchain Platforms
Several platforms for building blockchain systems
have been developed in recent years. Amongst the
most popular of these are the following:
Ethereum (Ethereum, 2019) is an open-source,
public blockchain platform first proposed by
Vitalik Buterin in 2013. Ethereum features Ether,
a token (cryptocurrency) which can be used to pay
for “gas”, a unit of computation performed by
smart contracts (scripts) which run on the
Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Ethereum
supports a modified version of Nakamoto
consensus (Bitcoin’s consensus protocol).
Ethereum is widely used for the development of
Peer to Peer (P2P) Distributed (or Decentralized)
Apps (Dapps).
Hyperledger Fabric (Hyperledger Fabric,
2019) is a permissioned (private) blockchain
infrastructure developed by IBM and Digital
Asset which features a modular architecture,
smart contracts, and configurable consensus and
membership services. Besides being a private
blockchain, Hyperledger Fabric differs from
Ethereum in not having a built-in token, and in its
degree of configurability, among other items.
Hyperledger Fabric is one of a number of
“Hyperledger” projects developed under the aegis
of the Linux Foundation and is aimed at the
enterprise with a special significance for Business
to Business (B2B) applications.
Corda (Corda, 2019) was developed by the R3
blockchain technology company. Corda is an
KMIS 2019 - 11th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems
232
open-source distributed ledger and smart contract
platform developed with the needs of business in
mind. Like Hyperledger Fabric, Corda is
permissioned and does not have a native token,
however it is more specialized, aimed specifically
at the needs of the financial services industry.
Openchain (Openchain, 2019) developed by
CoinPrism is an open-source blockchain platform
for organizations that want to issue and manage
digital assets in a secure, and scalable manner.
Smart contracts are supported and partitioned
consensus is used so that users can create unique
instances that will have a single authority. Tokens
on Openchain can be pegged to Bitcoin.
Openchain uses a client-server architecture rather
than the more widely used blockchain P2P
architecture. There is also no miner required for
consensus, so transactions are instant and free.
BigChainDB (BigChainDB, 2019) is an open-
source distributed storage system which aims to
combine the advantages of NoSQL databases with
blockchain (distributed storage, immutability, no
central authority). BigChainDB is built out of
number of NoSQL database nodes (e.g.
MongoDB instances) which store immutable
information about transactions which are kept
synchronized by using the Tendermint Byzantine
Fault Tolerance (BFT) scheme for consensus.
BigChainDB can be either public, private, or
permissioned.
3 REPRESENTATIVE
BLOCKCHAIN IN HIGHER
EDUCATION PROJECTS
In this section we will look at some recent
representative projects in the application of
blockchain technology in higher education.
A number of researchers have explored the use of
blockchain to store university grades, i.e. university
transcripts. A group at the University of Glasgow has
developed a functional prototype for storage of
student grades at the institution (Rooksby, 2017). The
platform chosen was Ethereum, hence it was built on
a public blockchain. This was exploratory research,
and they identified several challenges, including in
the use of smart contracts to calculate grades in an
algorithmic manner. Another project giving a
prototype implementation is (Arndt, 2018), where a
private BigChainDB blockchain is used for storage of
student transcripts (not grades within a course as in
the previously described research, though). Initial
results were promising. (Yokubov, 2018) describes a
prototype implementation of a university transcript
system using an Ethereum private blockchain and
ERC-20 tokens (a standard for tokens, which are
needed to carry out smart contracts, on Ethereum) on
that blockchain. Students are able to read their grades,
while professors and administrative personnel can
record grades.
EduCTX (Turkanović, 2018) is an ambitious
project for the development of a higher education
credit platform based on the concept of the European
Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), a
framework which has been approved by the EU. The
decentralized higher education credit and grading
system can offer a globally unified viewpoint for
students, higher education institutions, and other
potential stakeholders such as prospective employers.
A prototype implementation has been built on the
ARK blockchain platform (ARK, 2019). ARK is a
public blockchain, but the researchers changed it to a
private (permissioned) one by taking advantage of the
flexible nature of ARK to change the parameters of
the consensus algorithm used DPoS (delegate proof
of stake). Rules to ensure the validity of transactions
on the blockchain have been defined. ECTX tokens
are used to represents credits that students gain for
completing courses (analogous to the way that ERC-
20 tokens are used in the work above). The authors
propose to apply the prototype system firstly at their
home institution, the University of Maribor, and then
at a select set of institutions of higher education. They
anticipate that this or a similar system could
potentially evolve into a unified, simplified and
globally ubiquitous higher education credit and
grading system.
A more theoretical investigation is given in
(Kuvshinov, 2018) where the architecture for the
Disciplina platform for student records is given and
main issues arising from storing student records in a
blockchain are analysed. Their platform incorporates
both private blockchains (maintained by individual
institutions of higher learning and public blockchains,
managed by “Witnesses” who witness the fact that a
private block was produced by a valid institution. A
good discussion of the problems of privacy,
provability, and data disclosure in this context are
given in a theoretical manner.
Beyond traditional transcripts, blockchain is also
being used or proposed for various alternative types
of educational credentialing. Blockchain promises
permanent authentication and storage for a myriad of
alternative credentials made up of diverse
microcredentials, nanodegrees, MOOCs, and
certificates/badges from various types of training
An Overview of Blockchain for Higher Education
233
programmes. These credentials can then be directly
controlled and managed by users (Jirgensons, 2018).
Among the most well-known of these projects,
MIT’s Media Lab created Blockcerts, a mobile app
for educational credentialing built on Bitcoin (MIT,
2019). At the Open University, researchers have
developed the OpenLearn system built on the
Ethereum public blockchain which awards
OpenLearn badges for completing sections of a
course and passing assessments (OpenLearn, 2019).
The creators of that system are now working on a
blockchain project to create a permanent distributed
record of intellectual effort and associated
reputational reward that instantiates and democratises
educational reputation beyond the academic
community (Sharples 2016). Blockchain for
Education (Gräther, 2018) is another prototype
system supporting the storage, retrieval and
verification of certificates via blockchain technology.
Certificates are an important means of proving
lifelong learning achievement in today’s
environment, however they are susceptible to forgery.
Blockchain helps to solve this problem. The
prototype system uses Ethereum and its smart
contracts to manage identities of registered certificate
authorities and the hashes of certificates which are
stored in a separate, centralized document
management system, while the profile information of
certificate authorities is stored using the
Interplanetary File System (IPFS) distributed file
system. Storing data off the blockchain allows it to be
be deleted as is required, for example, by the
European General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR) for personal information.
Other uses of blockchain in higher education have
also been contemplated, including motivation,
assessment, advising, etc. (Chen, 2018). A prototype
system for a blockchain based learning analytics
platform built on Ethereum has been proposed as well
(Ocheja, 2018).
4 CONCLUSIONS
One of the factors influencing the choice of a
particular blockchain platform is the availability of an
API in a particular language. Researchers will
naturally prefer a solution which allows them to
program in their chosen language. Ethereum has
proven to be a popular platform in higher education
projects due to its smart contracts and generalist
orientation, but other platforms have been widely
used as well.
Among the areas in higher education where
blockchain is currently being most widely used are a
pair of emerging application areas which involve
multiple, distributed actors, and which thus lend
themselves naturally to the use of blockchain as a part
of a system, namely for transfer of credits among
highly mobile students crossing international borders
(in the EU), and as a means of consolidating, new,
diverse educational credentials (certificates, badges,
MOOCs, etc.) in a more flexible, student-oriented
approach to lifelong learning. Other areas of higher
education could profit from the use of blockchain as
well, however the criteria given in section 2 should be
carefully considered before incorporating blockchain
in order to avoid using inappropriate technology
simply because it is new and “hot”.
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