The future of university education: Examination, transcript, and certificate system using blockchain

Abstract

AbstractBlockchain is slowly but surely changing the world. Cryptocurrencies are having a profound effect on the economic landscape. With the advent of COVID‐19, the education sector, just like other sectors, need a complete reinvention or redesign to continue producing graduates that would be able to effectively contribute to an ever‐changing world. Very often, the administrative burden of managing the award of academic qualifications is ignored. With a globalised world and given the actual context of COVID‐19, education is no longer seen as being carried out within the four walls of the classroom. The future of University education lies within the ability to pool resources from different places and to encourage cross‐university collaboration. This can also be seen as the ability to assemble the different building blocks so that the learners are able to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge. This study focuses on the design and implementation of an examination, transcript and certificate system using blockchain. It is meant to provide a completely transparent and effective examination and awards system that can be used to replace the traditional one in place. What has also proposed in this study is a novel light blockchain system composed of a number of modules, which have been built from scratch. With its decentralised approach, the proposed system proved to be very much helpful. Other features, such as security, immutability, availability, and anonymity, of the system are also discussed and yielded highly encouraging results.