Updated: December 15, 2022 
One of the essential aspects of a business is its ability to integrate and adapt to the prevailing trends. Keeping this in mind, one of the most popular developments in the market is the introduction of blockchain.
It is often referred to as the next generation of the internet, with the potential to disrupt a wide range of industries. Since its launch in 2009, blockchain has attracted a lot of interest and investment.
Being as widespread as the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies, its applications now extend well beyond banking and finance. The technology has immense potential to impact the educational industry by providing an immutable ledger of records and ensuring transparency in the entire learning process.
Education is considered to be one of the most important institutions in any society. However, a number of challenges limit the effectiveness of education. The biggest challenge is the lack of trust between students and teachers/educators.
Blockchain has the potential to transform the entire education system, making the overall learning process seamless. According to Gartner’s 2019 CIO survey, it was found that 2% of higher educational institutes had already integrated blockchain, while 18% planned to do it in the next two years.
This blog will cover a detailed overview of these blockchain development services and their potential effect on the education sector in the coming decades. In addition, it also covers the challenges of implementing blockchain in the education sector. Let’s dig deep!
Blockchain And Its Importance
A blockchain is a digital ledger of all types of cryptocurrency transactions. It is constantly evolving as “completed” blocks keep adding to it with a completely new set of recordings. Each of the blocks contains a particular cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Bitcoin nodes mainly use blockchain technology to differentiate legitimate Bitcoin transactions from attempts to re-spend coins that have already been spent elsewhere.
The history of blockchain began with the release of Bitcoin in 2009. The concept of blockchain was first proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto, who is the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. Nakamoto’s vision was primarily to create a decentralized currency that could be used without the need for a central authority.
Since its inception, blockchain technology has been used for a variety of applications beyond cryptocurrency. Today, blockchain is being explored as a potential solution for almost everything ranging from supply chain management to voting systems. With its ability to promote trust and transparency, it’s no wonder that blockchain is being hailed as a game-changing technology.
Since it serves as a highly secure, decentralized, and tamper-proof way of handling various kinds of digital transactions, blockchain has become the talk of the town. Through the help of this advanced technology, transactions are fully verified and recorded on a public ledger, ensuring that everyone can see what has happened and that no one can easily change it. This makes blockchain an ideal way to store and transfer sensitive information.
Brief Overview About The Education Sector
Education, being one of the most important sectors in any society, is the key to unlocking human potential and empowering people to reach their full potential. A well-educated population is essential for the economic development and prosperity of any country.
Education also plays a vital role in promoting social cohesion and integration. It helps to build bridges between different social groups and foster a sense of common identity and purpose. Not only limited to this, but it can also help reduce various crimes and conflicts and promote social and economic development extensively.
Challenges That The Education Sector Is Facing
The education sector is facing various challenges. A few of them are listed below!
- Declining enrollment is a significant challenge for the education sector. In many countries, birth rates are declining, and the population is aging. This means that there are fewer children entering the education system. In addition, many families are choosing to homeschool their children or send them to private schools. This has resulted in a decline in enrollment in public schools.
- Inadequate funding is another major challenge for the education sector. In many countries, education budgets have been cut in recent years. This has mainly resulted in a huge decline in the quality of education. Moreover, various schools are overcrowded and tend to lack adequate resources. This has a negative impact on the learning environment and impacts the working of educational institutes.
- In many countries, educational outcomes are poor. This is due to a number of factors, including inadequate funding, poor teaching, and low motivation. This can severely affect the economy and society. Moreover, this results in a waste of human potential.
Benefits Of Blockchain Integration In Education
As you now have a brief overview of blockchain technology, it’s now time to explore the top-notch benefits offered by blockchain integration in education. Let’s take a look at them!
1. Ensures Personal Educational Records Stay Secured
The increasing use of blockchain technology in education is leading to more efficient management of student records. Blockchain ensures that student records stay up to date with high accuracy, alongside being safe from any unauthorized access.
Suppose the total course curriculum for medical school at a particular institution is around 700 pages. Each sheet must be properly signed and stamped by each student who requested this record. Manually, this would surely be a tedious task. However, with blockchain integration, a person might quickly obtain a comprehensive, verifiable record of subject courses and academic achievements in just a few clicks.
The extensive use of blockchain in education makes it a mere cakewalk to streamline the process of sharing records between various different institutions. This can save a considerable amount of time and resources and make it easier for students to transfer credits between schools.
2. Enables Efficient Administrative School Operations
Blockchain technology can enable more efficient administrative operations for schools. For example, blockchain can be easily used to track school finances and budgeting, which can help to improve transparency and accountability.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are another way blockchain can benefit the educational sector. ERP systems for school management that are outdated can easily be revived and given new life via blockchain. A couple of the ways blockchain may be used to enhance ERP systems are cloud connectivity and high-protection blockchain storage.
By incorporating blockchain technology into ERP, various businesses can quickly develop a permissioned blockchain system that is primarily designed for them and allows for the free sharing of systems of records with trusted parties in a highly secure, collaborative environment.
Ultimately, blockchain can help to streamline many different aspects of school administration, making the process more efficient and effective. This way, school administration can conduct their operations with higher productivity alongside saving their precious time.
3. Helps Students To Store Diplomas and Certificates
Blockchain technology can help students to store their diplomas and credentials with ease. This is because blockchain ensures that essential pieces of information remain secured.
When a student’s diploma or certificate credentials are stored on a blockchain, they can be easily verified by anyone who needs to check it. This can help to streamline the process of verifying a student’s credentials, and it can also help to prevent any kind of malicious activities.
Through blockchain, employers would simply require a link to a digital diploma rather than requesting certification of a physical copy from the institution that provided the credential. In 2017, MIT began distributing digital, blockchain-based diplomas to its graduates. This also reduces the chances of people submitting forged diplomas to prospective employers.
4. Better Learning Performance Tracking of Students
Blockchain technology is quite helpful when it comes down to tracking the learning performance of different students. With the help of blockchain, educators can track the progress of each student and identify areas where they need improvement. The transparency of data storage on blockchains gives teachers a pool of helpful tools to keep an eye on students’ progress.
This would mainly allow them to tailor the education to the needs of each individual, resulting in better learning outcomes.
5. Automating Enforceable Agreements Between Different Parties Via Smart Contracts
Smart contracts are agreements between two parties that are written in code and stored on a blockchain. The code primarily defines the conditions of the agreement and what actions should be taken if those conditions are met.
Using a distributed ledger to manage agreements between two parties via smart contracts is a beneficial way to handle the many necessary agreements that need to be made between students and schools. Smart contracts can extensively automate many of the tasks that are currently done manually, such as sending reminders and making payments.
Through blockchain integration, the completion of assignments and attendance tends to be automatically recorded and saved as a part of each student’s profile. All the automatic work that may be produced by this sequence of “check-ins” will make things easier for school faculty members and save ample time and effort for both parties.
Potential Challenges Of Blockchain Integration In Education
There are various challenges to adopting blockchain into the educational sector. Here are some of the most prominent ones!
1. Integration With Legacy Systems
Integrating blockchain technology with legacy systems can be a challenge, especially in the education sector. While blockchain offers a number of advantages, such as increased security and transparency, there are some challenges as well.
Since blockchain technology is still in its early stages of development, and there are not yet many established standards, it becomes quite challenging to integrate blockchain with existing systems.
Organizations do not have access to the requisite pool of blockchain expertise to participate in this entire process due to a lack of trained developers. This can be a particular challenge in the education sector, where there are often multiple stakeholders involved.
Reliance on a third party might mitigate this issue. But to implement the majority of market-available solutions, the company must commit a sizable amount of time and money.
Moreover, since blockchain is a decentralized technology, there is no central authority controlling the network. This can make it quite a challenging task to coordinate between different stakeholders.
2. Blockchain’s Environmental Cost
The environmental cost of blockchain technology is another primary challenge of blockchain integration in education. The cost of the hardware and software needed to run a blockchain network can be massive, and the electricity required to power the network can have a high environmental cost. There are a number of ways to reduce the environmental cost of blockchain technology, but it is still a challenge that needs to be adequately addressed.
3. Lack of Blockchain Developers
If you’re planning on adopting blockchain technology in your educational institution, then the lack of blockchain developers may be quite a problem for you. While the number of blockchain developers is constantly on the rise, the demand still outweighs the supply. This is particularly challenging for education, as blockchain technology is in its early stages, and there is a lack of understanding of how to use it.
However, there are a number of initiatives underway to address this challenge, including various social groups that are working to promote blockchain education and build a community of blockchain developers. In addition, a number of online courses and programs are available to help people learn about blockchain technology and how to develop various applications.
With the help of these initiatives, it is hoped that the number of blockchain developers will increase and that this technology will become more widely adopted in the educational sector.
Wrapping Up
So, this is all you need to know about blockchain integration in education, how it benefits and what are the challenges of adopting this technology. Just like other industries, blockchain has also influenced the education sector from all directions.
Turn to RV Technologies and get started with your dedicated blockchain integration in education. Our technical experts with you navigate through all the potential challenges and bring the technology’s wide array of benefits to light.
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