Blockchain in Education: Connecting Learning Records and Contents through the Blockchain
Patrick Ocheja, Brendan Flanagan, Hiroaki Ogata · 2021
When students change school, they are unable to take their learning records with them to the new school except for certificates and/or transcripts.One of the main barriers to connecting and transferring learning records across different institutions is the presence of different learning systems and the inability to ensure privacy and trust among decentralized parties.In this paper, we address these concerns and present the Blockchain of Learning Logs (BOLL) platform that allows different institutions to connect learning records of their students across different environments as verifiable and non-modifiable transactions on the blockchain.The BOLL system currently runs as a consortium blockchain where approved institutes become stewards of writing and verifying the learning logs of students.We also program smart contracts that store permissions and only unlock such records to teachers or other users permitted by the record owner.We further present some notable use cases of the BOLL system such as permissions management, learning records transfer, growth of students' knowledge map, and a decentralized e-learning marketplace for authoring, sponsoring, and accessing learning materials.Finally, we present the initial feedback we have received from teachers, discuss key issues that have made solving this problem worthwhile and the potential directions for future work.