Abstract
Blockchain technologies are awakening in recent years the interest of different actors in various sectors and, among them, the education field, which is studying the application of these technologies to improve information traceability, accountability, and integrity, while guaranteeing its privacy, transparency, robustness, trustworthiness, and authenticity. Different interesting proposals and projects were launched and are currently being developed. Nevertheless, there are still issues not adequately addressed, such as scalability, privacy, and compliance with international regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe. This paper analyzes the application of blockchain technologies and related challenges to issue and verify educational data and proposes an innovative solution to tackle them. The proposed model supports the issuance, storage, and verification of different types of academic information, both formal and informal, and complies with applicable regulations, protecting the privacy of users’ personal data. This proposal also addresses the scalability challenges and paves the way for a global academic certification system.
Highlights
The process of issuing and registering academic data is presently a process carried out within each educational institution’s proprietary systems and largely isolated from other organizations’ record-keeping procedures
With the growing need to demonstrate acquired abilities and skills in an increasingly competitive world, this situation favors the appearance of fake academic certificates, that come from five different sources: (1) “degree mills” that generate fake qualifications that are sold to customers that pay for them [1]; (2) fabricated documents that are generated by inexistent academic institutions [2]; (3) modified documents that alter authentic documents with false dates, courses, specializations, etc.; (4) “in-house”-produced certificates, which are fake academic records created by a real institution and printed and sealed as if they were authentic but made by dishonest employees; and (5) inaccurate translations of authentic documents that are used to accomplish certain requirements in another country with a different language
If a presently active institution discontinues its educational activities and disappears, all its educational data will probably vanish and the traceability between alumni and their original completed studies will be lost, which, in turn, prevents the verification of such studies by a third party. This affects both formal and informal learning, which seems to be increasingly relevant in future professional environments with initiatives such as the one promoted by Google [3], which plans to issue certificates for six-months online courses to students and treat them as the equivalent of a four-year degree if learners pretend to apply for a related job at the company
Summary
The process of issuing and registering academic data is presently a process carried out within each educational institution’s proprietary systems and largely isolated from other organizations’ record-keeping procedures. If a presently active institution discontinues its educational activities and disappears, all its educational data will probably vanish and the traceability between alumni and their original completed studies will be lost, which, in turn, prevents the verification of such studies by a third party This affects both formal and informal learning, which seems to be increasingly relevant in future professional environments with initiatives such as the one promoted by Google [3], which plans to issue certificates for six-months online courses to students and treat them as the equivalent of a four-year degree if learners pretend to apply for a related job at the company.
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