US Education Department promotes putting student records on blockchain

The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered flaws throughout varied sectors. As a consequence, plenty of authorities departments are evaluating blockchain-based programs as doable options for challenges involving multiparty workflows, record-keeping, transparency and extra. 

For instance, the United States Department of Education just lately offered funding for the launch of the “Education Blockchain Initiative.” Referred to because the EBI, this venture is led by the American Council on Education — a company that helps the upper schooling neighborhood form efficient public coverage — and is designed to establish ways in which blockchain can enhance information movement between educational establishments and potential employers.

Determined to hunt out new expertise options, ACE introduced the “Blockchain Innovation Challenge” on the finish of 2020 to search out initiatives able to reinventing the U.S. schooling and employment ecosystem. The problem particularly centered on serving to underserved populations which have been hit the toughest by the pandemic.

Louis Soares, chief studying and innovation officer of ACE, advised Cointelegraph that as an entire, the upper schooling sector has been impacted financially by the financial downturn. This has resulted in a decline in student enrollments, putting much more strain on academic budgets that now require a digital method:

“Higher education is learning to operate in a new technology-enabled environment. We must explore different ways of creating connections between education and work. This includes finding new approaches to credentialing (and hiring) that leverage the potential of emerging technologies to improve communication among education and training organizations.”

Blockchain offers college students management over their credentials

According to Soares, blockchain expertise will help empower college students by offering them with management over their academic records like levels and transcripts. This is particularly vital for permitting seamless transitions to happen when a student transfers faculties, or for individuals who are searching for employment and want to indicate credentials.

A doc from the Education Department states that academic records are usually positioned on the faculty a student attends or has attended. It additional notes that if a student has transferred faculties, these records “may” switch with the student, however some “may” stay on the faculty. As such, there are a variety of challenges current for college kids who should acquire their private records.

The Blockchain Innovation Challenge devoted $900,000 to assist clear up this downside and introduced 4 Phase 1 winners on Feb. 11. According to Soares, the profitable groups — from Arizona, Nebraska, Texas and Utah — confirmed potential for utilizing blockchain and distributed ledger expertise to streamline the sharing of educational records.

For instance, one of many profitable groups was the UnBlockEd venture, which leverages a blockchain-based system to deal with inequitable switch credit score recognition points. The venture is led by the University of Arizona and the Georgia Institute of Technology, together with varied expertise suppliers and educational establishments.

Greg Heileman, vice provost for undergraduate schooling on the University of Arizona, advised Cointelegraph that UnBlockEd empowers college students by giving them self-sovereignty over their studying records. Heileman famous that that is achieved by a decentralized id administration system that permits college students to regulate who has entry to their studying records, or transcripts:

“We are working to build out a minimally viable product (MVP) that will clearly demonstrate the feasibility of our approach. This MVP will demonstrate how a student in a degree program at any college/university in the State of Kentucky can efficiently transfer to any other program at any other college/university in the state.”

Specifically, Heileman defined {that a} “degree roadmap” will probably be constructed to indicate college students the best way to switch their prior credit to these within the receiving program. To guarantee this, UnBlockEd leverages Fluree, a decentralized information platform that shops safe, verified, reusable information.

Brian Platz, co-CEO of Fluree, advised Cointelegraph that Fluree permits for information to be held privately by people, but it additionally lets different events view that information. As such, totally different teams can situation credentials, whereas these receiving the information can confirm the info is correct:

“This solves the data reusability problem. We use a private blockchain to tokenize data and validate a series of rules that guarantees information adheres to those rules. This is like a smart contract, but heavily data oriented.”

Blockchain solves information switch inefficiencies

The resolution being constructed by UnBlockEd is extraordinarily vital for plenty of causes. For occasion, in keeping with a examine by the Government Accountability Office, college students will on common lose the equal of 1 semester in fact work with every switch.

Heileman additional shared that out of 23 million college students in larger schooling, about 35% of them will switch at the very least as soon as, and 11% will do it twice throughout their educational profession. He additionally identified that neighborhood schools are disproportionately functioning as a major entry level for college kids from traditionally underrepresented ethnic teams and low-income households. “To put it mildly, transfer articulation is a structural inequity in higher education. Our hope is that the UnBlockEd project will reduce the extent of this inequity,” Heileman commented.

Another profitable project got here from Texas Woman’s University. This initiative goals to ascertain a consortium of establishments all through the North Texas area through a shared credentialing platform. The platform would permit college students to retailer and ship their academic records to high schools and employers throughout North Texas.

Fluree additionally helped energy the Lifelong Learner Project, which goals to develop a digital pockets for lecturers to retailer and entry their credentials, certifications and studying sources. This goals to allow lecturers to share these verifiable credentials with entities reminiscent of state licensing programs, human sources departments and studying administration programs.

Implementing is the following step

While every of those initiatives takes an modern method to fixing challenges associated to academic information sharing, implementing these initiatives will possible take a while.

For occasion, Platz defined that there’s a supply-and-demand aspect in the case of blockchain-based initiatives. He identified that whereas universities and academic teams can situation college students digital credentials, employers will not be but requesting them: “We are nonetheless constructing ecosystems round this involving schooling and authorities requirements.”

Fortunately, Platz noted that the new administration of President Joe Biden shows potential for implementing new technology standards focused on blockchain and other emerging technologies that can provide benefits. It’s also encouraging to see that other countries have started to store educational certificates and records on blockchain networks.

Matla, for example, was one of the first countries to announce that all academic certificates will probably be stored on a blockchain. Furthermore, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, created a pilot program in 2017 to issue blockchain-based digital certificates to graduates. While this can be, an MIT Media Lab weblog publish explaining classes realized from the venture noted that an vital takeaway has been that blockchain is an advanced expertise and that there are nonetheless only a few individuals who perceive it.

Read More at cointelegraph.com

source https://infomagzine.com/us-education-department-promotes-putting-student-records-on-blockchain/