One of the critical areas of everyday life is education, and with online education and edtech becoming extremely important over the past few months, it is also important to see how blockchain could transform or disrupt this sector.
Possible impacts
Verified, anonymous, secure and accurate assessments: A key reason for low employability of Indian learners is inconsistent teaching quality. However, a distributed, yet anonymous, ledger technology could give learners a participative role in rating teacher quality. With anonymous inputs, it is possible that teaching can be linked to performance, and therefore allow learners to choose more wisely and institutions to assess teachers. This could force academicians to become more learner-centric, leading to an improvement in learning outcomes.
Enhanced community-verified academic credentials: Verification of academic credentials in a secure manner, with each new one being added as a block to the chain and verified at periodic intervals, will reduce chances of fraud, misplacement and dubious claims. This could apply to the educator and the learner and, whether an educational institution or a company, the need to verify each claim manually will be done away with and save time and manpower. With the National Education Policy 2020 allowing learners to earn multiple degrees simultaneously and add academic credits that could tomorrow be fully transferable for smaller courses too, credits for each module can be validated on a distributed open ledger, by many individuals, anonymously.
Attendance and participation validation: When each learner’s presence is verified and recorded anonymously through a distributed ledger, it will help reduce absenteeism and improve learner outcome.
Stronger and open IP protection and rewards: As intellectual property infringement becomes more common despite laws, the only answer to ensuring clear ownership of IP rights lies in an open blockchain that allows them to be protected, and flags any attempt to use them fraudulently.
Substantial reduction in administrative costs: Whether it is screening applications and verifying identity and credentials, gathering application or other fees, or storing learner or teacher details, all these jobs — currently being done manually — can be fully automated, leading to a huge cost saving for the institution.
Ownership of learner’s credentials from institution to the community: There will be no need to run around for the certification or hunt for the right files or papers. The members of the chain or community can verify the individual’s learning, making the process open and transparent.
Imagine a world where learners are also co-creators, a world of seamless learning in which your participation earns you tokens that you can use to unlock new courses, based on the content you have created, or the courses that you have participated in. Using blockchain in education will lead to a truly learner-centric model where learners are not just receivers but also the co-creators and teachers are not just sending information one way but becoming more participative.
The writer is CEO & MD Talentedge.com
