A Proposed Model of Secure Academic Transcript Records with

Blockchain Technology in Higher Education

Meyliana

, Yakob Utama Chandra

, Cadelina Cassandra

, Surjandy

, Erick Fernando

, Henry

Antonius Eka Widjaja

and Harjanto Prabowo

Information Systems Department, School of Information Systems, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia

Computer Science Department, BINUS Graduate Program – Doctor of Computer Science, Bina Nusantara, University,

Keywords:

academic transcript records, blockchain, model, higher education.

Abstract:

The higher education institution today is a concern to become an institution that gives birth to people who can

compete in the current era. Stakeholders at the higher education institution will see how the data produced

by graduates can be trusted and no data manipulation takes place at the higher education institution. Based

on this problem, this article explains how higher education institutions use blockchain technology that is able

to maintain data security and prevent data manipulation, especially in academic transcript ﬁles. Academic

transcript records become an output from students after completing a semester or level of education at the

higher education institution. In general, academic transcript records are used when students complete a study

at a higher education institution as a document requirement for access to the company where they work.

Thus academic transcript reports become important for companies to ﬁnd out if this student is competent in

a certain area. In this case, accurate and valid data is certainly needed and the truth can be trusted. This

qualitative research contributes to the higher education institution through a proposed blockchain technology

model, especially in academic transcript records, so that the results of the proposed model ensure that data

manipulation does not occur in data in academic transcript records. The results of this model will be used

as design material for application design, so that the blockchain platform can be used in higher education

institutions, especially when publishing valid academic transcript records that can be trusted with the data.

1 INTRODUCTION

Higher education institutions around the world have

similar or even similar processes for value chains in

higher education, namely accepting future students,

providing knowledge to students, giving experiences

in higher education, examining feedback on what stu-

dents learn, asking students to work on the ﬁnal level

thesis then test the thesis until it has passed higher ed-

ucation. This is a common thing, always the value

chain of a higher education everywhere. Long ago,

before the existence of technology, the value chain

was executed manually without the help of technol-

ogy. So, there are many human errors. Such as, for

example, including the wrong student until a lot of

cheating takes place in the business process of higher

education (Kooli, 2019).

With the development of time, especially in the

last decade, higher education in today’s world needs

smarter technology and safer security options. The

goal is to create secure data security when implement-

ing business processes and value chains that are lo-

cated at the higher education institution. With tech-

nology and security evolving, it is possible for higher

education institutions to have a value chain linked

to complementary technology in creating secure data

storage (Ivanovi

c et al., 2018).

Security technology is indeed a major concern in

data, so no data can be manipulated, and real data in-

tegrity can be trusted. Developments in digital tech-

nology in the education world are also increasing to

support business education at every higher education

institution. For example, stakeholders who play a

role in the higher education institution have access to

data in the database and it is of course quite possible

that human errors can lead to data changes or inten-

tional or unintended data manipulation. The data in

the higher education institution is not small but con-

tains thousands and millions of data. With these con-

ditions the higher education institution should think

172

Meyliana, ., Chandra, Y., Cassandra, C., Surjandy, ., Fernando, E., Widjaja, H. and Prabowo, H.

A Proposed Model of Secure Academic Transcript Records with Blockchain Technology in Higher Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0009907401720177

In Proceedings of the International Conferences on Information System and Technology (CONRIST 2019), pages 172-177

ISBN: 978-989-758-453-4

of more modern technology to prevent data manipu-

lation (Palma et al., 2019).

Data manipulation and data fraud can occur due

to the existence of irresponsible users or due to inten-

tional changes to the data by the user. This will there-

fore be harmful to some or all stakeholders. Higher

education institutions must maintain data integrity

that is further enhanced by the existence of technol-

ogy that continues to evolve and is modern. Every-

one’s conﬁdence in the higher education institution is

therefore maintained and even improves the relation-

ship of trust between stakeholders in the higher edu-

cation institution (Meyliana et al., ).

In this era, blockchain is one of the data in-

tegrity solutions and data manipulation solutions.

Blockchain is a technology used as a concept in dis-

tributed ledgers, where it can be validated by con-

sensus and the presence of cryptographic algorithms.

The concept that Satoshi Nakamoto built in 2008

was the use of Bitcoin (Nakamoto et al., 2008), and

its development continued until the smart contract

Nick Szabo discovered at the time when implement-

ing blockchain technology in the industry (Singh and

Singh, 2016)(Ahram et al., 2017).

Higher education institutions make it possible to

use blockchain technology as a reliable technology to

ensure data integrity and to prevent data manipulation

in the business process and the value chain of higher

education students’ learning processes. With the de-

velopment of the learning process continuing to grow,

this is imperative to ensure stakeholder satisfaction

and to provide smooth workﬂow data from the mo-

ment potential students enroll at the higher education

institution until the student is declared to be gradu-

ated from the higher education institution. (Meyliana

et al., ).

The qualitative research is focused on proposed

models in the learning process of students with the use

of blockchain technology in higher education to pub-

lish academic transcript records with valid and safe

publications. With this model it may be easier to de-

velop blockchain technology because of the existence

of this model to guarantee data in academic transcript

ﬁles in accordance with the original reality and data

integrity. The discussion about this model is that the

value chain can be used in higher education, espe-

cially in the learning process of a person named as

a student, until the student has passed the higher edu-

cation.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Academic Transcript Records

Data that can give everyone information about

courses that have been followed and numbers about

students are included in academic transcript records.

With this data we can also see the extent of the stu-

dent’s performance in each semester, for example if

you want to know how much the GPA score or the

value of a course the student has taken (Owolabi et al.,

2018).

When students study at a higher education insti-

tution, parents of students can see the achievement of

results through academic transcript reports provided

or student parents request student services. In addi-

tion to the time during the study period, students af-

ter graduation, the company / industry party also sees

student performance while the student is in the higher

education institution (Itoh et al., 2013).

2.2 Blockchain in Education Sector

Blockchain in the education sector is indeed not

discussed much. But given the advantages of the

blockchain and also the needs at the university,

blockchain is very likely applied. As with other

sectors, the education sector also has many valida-

tion phases, veriﬁcations and transactions must be

recorded correctly. If done correctly, stakeholders

related to the data can directly access and validate

without having to conﬁrm repeatedly. Research con-

ducted by (Turkanovi

c et al., 2018) attempted to build

a blockchain platform for recording transactions in

higher education based on the concept of the Eu-

ropean Credit Transfer and Accumulation System.

This technology offers a decentralized system, lec-

ture credit and a process of recording values that

stakeholders with data interests see such as compa-

nies, institutions and other organizations. All pro-

cesses that are carried out in the blockchain are stored

securely from the student’s registration (Turkanovi

et al., 2018).

Transactions that can take place in a blockchain

to tertiary institutions such as ﬁnancial transactions,

learning processes, education, book loans, assess-

ments, certiﬁcation, etc. can be implemented (Grech

and Camilleri, 2017). As also done by Bdiwi, Runz,

Faiz and Cherif who tried to connect the process in

educational activities in the Ubiquitous Learning en-

vironment (Bdiwi et al., 2017).

A Proposed Model of Secure Academic Transcript Records with Blockchain Technology in Higher Education

173

2.3 Data Security in Blockchain

Data security on the blockchain uses the crypto-

graphic method that is split into two keys, namely

Public Key and Private Key. Both keys are used when

the transaction takes place. The use of the public key

in a block requires consensus between all interested

parties (between nodes) so that the proof of work / ev-

idence of interest in the block can produce. This con-

cept ensures that the data has multiple security layers,

making it difﬁcult for the intruder (attacker) to mod-

ify the data. While the use of the private key aims to

secure the identity of the user (Li et al., 2017).

3 RELATED WORK

Figure 1 shows that the process starts after the student

is registered as a registered student and has a student

ID that is always linked to the student as the student’s

unique identity in a higher education institution. With

the existence of the student ID, the student can regis-

ter according to faculty attended by the student. Stu-

dents will register / register in the faculty department

every semester. In this condition too, the faculty de-

partment will always create and maintain the curricu-

lum every few years to ensure that the curriculum is

updated in accordance with the needs of the stake-

holders of higher education institutions.

After registration, students give lectures with

teachers in the classroom and / or laboratory. During

the lecture process, students also have access to learn-

ing resources (Learning Management System, course

material, libraries, etc.). Students will take the interim

and end of the semester exams. The exam results

are then corrected by the teacher and the grades are

entered in the academic system. Assessment results

are used to evaluate and evaluate student performance

next semester registration. If there are students who

perform less than required, students receive guidance

and repeat the course. However, if students fail in

each semester, the faculty will recommend trying to

relocate or resign. If the evaluation produces good

results, the student continues with the next semester

and repeats the process until the student is eligible for

a thesis course.

Figure 1: Value Chain of Student Learning.

4 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

This research gives the result that there is a proposed

model of blockchain that can be used for academic

transcript reports from students in higher education.

To explain these results, this section is divided into 2

(two) sections, namely the ﬁrst with regard to activity

diagrams with the existence of blockchain technol-

ogy, the technological basis of the higher education

institution. And the second is about the blockchain

technology design model at the higher education in-

stitution.

4.1 A Proposed Activity Diagram with

Blockchain

In Figure 2 is an activity diagram with the blockchain

technology platform below. There are 8 users and 1

blockchain platform in the business process. Users

who are main users are (1) students in the learn-

ing process of the higher education institution. Be-

cause with the presence of students, the process can

proceed according to the procedures followed by the

higher education institution. (2) Student registration

and planning unit is the user who makes the class

schedule and exam schedule. (3) Teachers and (4) As-

sistants are users who become facilitators in teaching

and teaching students. Teachers and assistants have

lesson activities organized by the student registration

and planning unit.

(5) Academic operation unit is a user who main-

tains operational learning conditions according to the

schedule determined in the Student Registration and

Planning Unit section. With these users, users vali-

date the presence of students and exam activities in

general. (6) Users of laboratory units are focused on

planning assistants for teaching in the laboratory.

In addition, they also ask exam questions regard-

ing laboratory activities. (7) Student Advisory Unit is

a user who helps students to maintain the emotional

state of students. If a student encounters an obstacle

or problem, the student can consult with these users

to ﬁnd a solution to any problems related to educa-

tion and learning at the higher education institution.

In addition, this user wants to evaluate every learning

activity performed by students. (8) Faculty depart-

ment is the user who validates the activities performed

by teachers and students. With this validation, every

condition made by students can still be followed and

become feedback for faculty departments.

Figure 2 shows the process explanation as fol-

lows, starting with the student registration and plan-

ning unit, which makes a schedule for teaching and

learning. After completing the planning, the student

CONRIST 2019 - International Conferences on Information System and Technology

174

registration and planning unit sends the set schedule

to the laboratory unit and faculty for veriﬁcation. The

laboratory unit and faculty department then inform

the student registration and planning unit of the ap-

proval. The results of the planning are then given

to assistants and teachers to perform educational and

learning activities.

Until the indicated date, the teacher and assistant

teach and practice in the classroom or laboratory. In

the meantime, the student registration and planning

unit plan the exam. The exam timetable made is

given to the faculty department to validate the exam

timetable. After validation, the student registration

and planning unit will complete the exam schedule.

The timetable examination is then communicated to

the teacher, assistant and laboratory unit.

At the same time, the faculty department also car-

ried out an assignment for the teacher to make an

exam question. So after getting the appointment, the

teacher and assistants ask exam questions about the-

ory and practice in the laboratory. When the exam

work has been completed by the teacher and the as-

sistant, the Academic Operation Unit performs dou-

ble exam questions when the time is reached for the

exam to take place. When the exam time arrives, the

student takes the exam and is set to take the exam by

the academic operation unit as in the case of the su-

pervisor and the student’s attendance form. The atten-

dance form signed by the student is validated by the

Academic Operation Unit and Laboratory Unit.

After the answers to the student’s examination

have been collected, the answers to the student’s ex-

amination are given to teachers and assistants to be

assessed. After teachers and assistants have assessed

and entered the grades in the academic system, this

is the important point that the values of the teacher

and the assistant are validated by the faculty depart-

ment and the results of the validation are recorded in

the blockchain system. At this stage, therefore, the

blockchain registers the value of each student in the

student ID created at the start of the student in the

higher education institution.

After the faculty department has validated the stu-

dent research score, the academic operation unit pub-

lishes a score for the student to view the student’s

results. Every semester, the Student Advisory Unit

evaluates every student and appeals to students whose

grades are not satisfactory. If there is anything to be

discussed with the student after the evaluation, the

Student Advisory Unit discusses with the student for

better performance in the next semester.

At this stage, the results of evaluations performed

by the Student Advisory Unit are stored in the

blockchain system, so that recording this history is

correct in accordance with conducting interviews or

evaluating students. If after an analysis of academic

study results in the semester and is lower than the

norm, it is advisable to leave the higher education in-

stitution. However, if it does not meet the standards,

the student can proceed to the next semester.

Figure 2: Activity Diagram of Academic Transcript

Records

It can therefore be concluded that after the fac-

ulty department has validated the ﬁnal score, the

blockchain platform also registers the ﬁnal score. And

ﬁnally, when the Student Advisory Unit completes the

evaluation of the student’s academic study results, the

results of the student’s analysis are also recorded on

the blockchain platform. Thus blockchain technology

in learning activities of students of business processes

can guarantee data security and produce data integrity

that can be maintained.

Because the nature of the Blockchain is to validate

data, to provide accurate, integrated and irreversible

information, the stored data cannot be changed. Be-

cause blockchain technology has formulas that can be

used to ensure that the learning process can always

be executed in accordance with the available time, the

blockchain cannot repeat the last time. This makes

data security safer. Blockchain also works accord-

ing to the time series that cannot be returned, so that

posted data cannot be deleted or changed again. If

you want to change it again, you will see an update

date for the data. This keeps the data valid.

A Proposed Model of Secure Academic Transcript Records with Blockchain Technology in Higher Education

175

4.2 A Proposed Model of Blockchain for

Release an Academic Transcript

Records

In the following section you will ﬁnd a description of

the model of blockchain in Release a Diploma Cer-

tiﬁcation. The model that will be discussed is the

model related to Section A of the Activity Diagram

with Blockchain Platform and focuses in this section

on the blockchain platform model. In this case, the

process is related to the input and output of each pro-

cess in the blockchain platform.

Figure 3: A Proposed Model of Blockchain Platform for

Issued a Secure Academic Transcript Records

Through section A described, in Figure 3, entities

are involved in the Blockchain platform, namely:

• Faculty department, the actions performed on this

entity are validation of the learning schedule, val-

idate the exam schedule, assign the teacher to cre-

ate exam questions, validate the ﬁnal score and

analyze the academic study results. The most im-

portant action to introduce the blockchain system

is to validate the ﬁnal score.

• Student registration and planning unit, the ac-

tions that are carried out on this entity are: cre-

ating, teaching and learning timetable, complet-

ing the teaching timetable, making the exami-

nation timetable and completing the examination

timetable. No actions are taken in this entity to

include in the blockchain system, but the actions

performed on this entity affect the validity of the

data.

• Student Advisory Unit, the action being taken to

evaluate these academic results of students. Only

1 action is performed, but this action is stored in

the blockchain system because the results of the

analysis of the evaluation are stored as valid data.

• Academic operation unit, the action that this en-

tity takes is to ensure that the exam process of

students runs smoothly by asking duplicate exam

questions, validating the presence of students and

exam activities and publishing the ﬁnal score on

the learning system. The action taken is indeed

not included in the blockchain system, but the ac-

tions carried out on this entity have an impact to

ensure that all research processes run smoothly.

• Students, teachers, laboratory units and assistants

are entities that become the driving role so that

this process follows the procedure, precisely in the

teaching and learning process of the higher edu-

cation institution. Students listen to lectures and

teachers offer knowledge to students, including

giving grades to students. The role for teachers

is also the same for assistants. Laboratory unit is

a unit that plays an important role if, during learn-

ing, there is a practice that students must experi-

ence in the laboratory. This 4 (four) entity has no

direct access to the blockchain system, but this en-

tity is very inﬂuential in the education and learn-

ing process at higher education institutions and so

the actions taken have an impact on data storage,

especially for academic transcript ﬁles.

5 CONCLUSIONS

From this study it can be concluded that with the

blockchain technology that can prevent data from be-

ing changed after the data has been entered into the

blockchain system, the data becomes valid and more

convincing to prevent changes in a higher education

institution.

Academic transcript records become an important

requirement for all stakeholders in every higher ed-

ucation institution. It is necessary to use technology

that cannot change data entered by parties from the

higher education institution. With the blockchain it

can ensure that the data is safe and reliable to prevent

data manipulation.

For example, the higher education institution can

offer certainty that the data recorded in the blockchain

system are valid data in accordance with the origi-

nal. A proposed model implemented in this docu-

ment aims to contribute today to the world of edu-

cation that the quality of academic transcript ﬁles is

really needed by stakeholders of higher education in-

stitutions and this is a very important need for data

security to prevent data manipulation. to prevent .

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This study is supported by the Directorate General of

Strengthening for Research and Development, Min-

istry of Research, Technology, and Higher Educa-

tion, Republic of Indonesia as a part of Penelitian

Terapan Unggulan Perguruan Tinggi Research Grant

to Bina Nusantara University entitled “Implementasi

Blockchain Platform untuk Menciptakan “Good Gov-

ernance” pada Perguruan Tinggi” or “The Implemen-

CONRIST 2019 - International Conferences on Information System and Technology

176

tation of Blockchain Platform to Create “Good Gov-

ernance” in Higher Education” with contract num-

ber: 12/AKM/PNT/2019 and contract date: 27 March

2019.

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