What is Blockchain Technology?
The blockchain technology is a trust-worthy, anti-corruption digital ledger that is programmed to record not only financial transactions but virtually everything of value. Blockchain indeed is a mechanism that brings everyone to the highest degree of accountability. It ensures not to miss any transactions; it doesn’t allow human or machine errors, or even an exchange that was not done with the consent of the parties involved.
Blockchain in Education
Almost every student who had or is dealing with the standardized process of college examinations knows how slow the process of grading can be. Not just lazy, the process can be costly as well as inefficient at the same time. Sometimes, sending results physically can take a long time, resulting in the inability of the students to meet set deadlines for college admissions. This causes a lot of problem to the students. However, blockchain can help in ensuring that the critical educational data is readily available to all at lesser cost and time.
Many institutions are running pilot programs to test the blockchain solutions. The list includes renowned names like University of Nicosia, MIT, a few schools in Malta, etc. This shows how blockchain in the education sector is still in its infancy, yet picking up at a high rate.
How do blockchains benefit the education field?
- Ease of Sharing – With the help of blockchain technology, students can share their degrees and related certificates with the employers with ease. Both the parties who want to access these documents can view it in the blockchain-enabled platform, however, the rights to allow someone with the access to the information stays with the owner.
- Reduce Costs – For the transcripts sought by the students from universities, there is some cost involved. However, with the blockchain technology, such charges are eliminated as the information is easily accessible to all.
- Eliminates Paper Use – Blockchain can keep all the data like certificates, records of credit transfers, other student-related records for a lifetime without having to depend on a manual paper documentation process.
- Immutability – Blockchain ensures that the information shared across is same for all. The information shared cannot be modified by anyone who is viewing or accessing the data. For example, once the students’ results are live on the blockchain platform, it cannot be altered or hacked in any way.
- No Intermediates – One can bypass the urgency of hiring a central control authority or ask an intermediator to keep the records of the shared information. With the help of blockchain, the data is stored securely, ensuring that no intermediary is required.
With numerous possibilities, blockchain technology is all set to take over the education space. The transition from the traditional ways of learning to the ones backed by the modern technologies like blockchain is hard to overlook in the current day and age. People usually believe that education sector is slow when it comes to embracing new technologies. However, the adoption of blockchain technology by one institution can stimulate the change in others as well and that too at a much quicker pace.
