Have you seen the Suits series where a college dropout Mike Ross hacked the Harvard’s and the American Bar Association’s systems in order to add himself to their lists of graduates? Such a trick would be impossible with blockchain-driven software. But how exactly? Let’s shed some light on the ways blockchain can disrupt the EduTech industry.
How It Detects Fraud
The Pakistani company Axact notoriously created a ‘diploma mill’ issuing fake university diplomas. Just in the UK, people bought from them more than 3,000 degrees.
A blockchain-led system would never ever let that happen. It works like this. As soon as a student finishes an educational institution, the blockchain automatically records the student’s results to the system. These records can’t be forged because they are witnessed by the blockchain nodes themselves, and nothing redundant can be added due to the append-only way of storage. In addition, data can be accessed only by authorized members.
Case Studies
Sony Global Education and Sony Corporation are advocating for the secure sharing of students’ results. For this purpose, the companies are building their proprietary system on top of the IBM blockchain. It provides authorized members with students’ personal details on demand.
Another example is the first blockchain-driven distributed high school Open Source University serving as a career development and academic ledger. Apart from delivering free learning materials to its students, the platform provides businesses with learners’ authenticated results on request.
How It Reduces Education Expenses
“The centralized model of present-day learning is no longer sustainable – indeed, blockchain technology allows for a total disintermediation and disaggregation of higher education,” says Professor John Domingue, Director of Knowledge Media Institute.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, the average annual tuition fee at a public in-state college was estimated at as much as $9,970, whereas education at a private college cost three times more. Among the reasons for such a price were both high salaries of teaching staff and administrative costs.
Blockchain could cut education costs by minimizing this administrative burden via its smart contracts. For instance, the technology can monitor the lecturing progress and trigger the respective salary payment as well as record students’ attendance and performance details to the database.
A Case Study
Odem, built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, can connect educators and students directly without any third parties required. The app automates and simplifies otherwise manual admin processes by activating payment cycles in line with delivered courses.
How It Motivates Students
Typically, 40-80% of online students drop out of their e-courses because of lack of motivation. Potentially, rewards could enhance the retention rate, and blockchain-led systems can come in handy with fair and transparent rewarding mechanisms.
A Case Study
The Knowledge.io team considers that knowledge acquisition needs to be rewarded. The software’s blockchain monitors students’ results and fairly distributes its own tokens in accordance with the students’ scores. These tokens are not just badges, but they can be spent on purchasing real products sold through the Knowledge Marketplace.
More Opportunities to Explore
Although dozens of decentralized educational apps are released every month, the market doesn’t have a clear leader among them. So if you have an idea for blockchain-driven software that can somehow enhance EduTech, you are welcome here.
To develop your app in a more cost-efficient way, we advise you to use an off-the-shelf blockchain ecosystem with all the features pre-designed, such as genEOS. You can significantly cut your costs of crafting an app by using genEOS’ ready-made smart contracts, inherent decentralization, and record witnessing algorithms.
Blockchain Benefits to Transform EduTech
So, if your goal is to detect fraud or cut costs by eliminating the need for third parties, blockchain-powered software is a way to reach it.
The technology can serve as a public ledger while delivering smart contracts for automating administrative tasks. When used to address the current pain points of the education industry, the technology can bring integrity, cost-efficiency, and higher motivation for learning.