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Factsheet Frankfurt School Blockchain Center (source: https://www.frankfurtschool.de/home/research/centres/blockchain)
Source publication
The task of this study is the comparative analysis of the diffusion process of Blockchain into the national higher education systems as well as analysis of best-practice examples. It is part of the EU Erasmus+ project "BlockWASTE", which has as its overall objective to promote the application of Blockchain in municipal waste management through the...
Citations
... Thus, the cases of forgery and lying regarding the accreditations will be minimized. In addition to storing certificates, blockchain technology would be used to manage and schedule exam sessions [10]. ...
College fraud has become a global phenomenon due to the increasing demand for diplomas in the labor market. Credential fraud is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and no country is immune to this problem. Almost every employer has or will encounter diplomas produced through the fraudulent activities of students or officials of legitimate institutions or issued by fake institutions. Because the accreditation process and the university's internal data systems are opaque to employers, employers must trust intermediaries involved in the accreditation process, such as students, faculty, and university officials, to ensure the legitimacy of the accomplishments claimed in the credentials. Due to this trust issue, there is always a risk of error and fraudulent activity leading to the creation and presentation of fake diplomas. An emerging technology called blockchain promises to build trustless and transparent systems where we do not have to trust any intermediary or central authority to conduct and record transactions between two strangers. Blockchain technology can help develop a trustless distributed digital platform through a peer-to-peer consensus network open to all to innovate their own trustless business models. It builds integrity and trust among strangers. People from different industries are using blockchain technology to develop applications to enable trustless transactions and protect systems and data from fraudulent activities This paper aims to explore how blockchain technology can be used to establish a certificate system that operates without intermediaries, such as students, teachers, and university officials. By leveraging the potential of blockchain technology, the system can be made trustless, and fraudulent activities within the certificate system can be prevented.
... The key characteristics of the blockchain such as fraud-proof security, retroactive transparency and trustworthiness are considered to be beneficial for innovating educational practices (Gilder, 2018;Grech & Camilleri, 2017;Lenz et al., 2021;Park, 2021;Yeung, 2018). ...
... Although distributed ledgers of blockchain are applied in different areas of general management and finance, their use in education remains limited. To date, the main areas of blockchain application in education are administration and management (Lenz et al., 2021;Yeung, 2018), where the blockchain-supported databases attest the validity and integrity of information. Apart from the management of certifications and accreditations, the most recent blockchain applications in education are global social responsibility and crowd financing/accounting. ...
Blockchain—a digitally distributed, decentralised, peer‐to‐peer shared ledger technology that exists across a delimited network—is recognised as a disruptive technology for the next socioeconomic mega trend. Most of the researchers in education theoretically speculate upon blockchain's extraordinary potentials for enterprises, finance, administration, and management of education. Little attention has been paid, however, to the problems of socially inclusive knowledge transformation, sustainability, and equitable access to quality education for marginalised communities. This paper aims to describe an approach and method for leveraging education blockchain as a possible means to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the social inclusion of marginalised communities of teachers and learners. This theoretical paper adopts a reflective research approach to critically analyse the current state of blockchain applications in education, and discuss its prospects for building educational commons for sustainable development. This paper contributes to the field of educational technology by exploring blockchain's prospects to building educational commons through four strategies: (a) network cooperation; (b) diversity of interacting agents; (c) shared resources; and (d) educational logistics. It also contributes to the conceptualisation of knowledge transformation for sustainable education by modelling blockchain‐supported educational commons and informing educational practitioners and technological innovation policy makers.
Practitioner notes
What is already known about this topic Blockchain is a digitally distributed, decentralised, peer‐to‐peer shared ledger technology that can be adopted across education networks.
Blockchain is regarded as a disruptive technology and a key driver of the next socioeconomic mega trend.
The extant literature on blockchain in education are technology‐centred and limited to applications in financing, administration, and management of education.
Blockchain's potential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in education and in favour of marginalised communities remain unexplored.
What this paper adds A critique of the mainstream literature and its utilitarian and business‐oriented paradigm for leveraging blockchain technology in education.
An operational definition of ‘education blockchain’ as a set of affordances of a blockchain technology that empowers educators and learners to achieve sustainability of their education system.
Conceptualisation of a ‘sustainable education blockchain’ for the knowledge transformation of marginalised communities.
A framework of blockchain for building educational commons through network cooperation, diversity of interactive agents, shared resources and educational logistics.
Implications for practice and/or policy This paper calls for re‐orienting blockchain technology in education from pro‐profit to human‐centred adoption. This is to ensure a balance among technological advances, knowledge transformation, and safeguarding of privacy and individual rights of marginalised teachers and learners.
Sustainable blockchain technology is for the social inclusion of marginalised teachers and learners by means of secure and trusted peer‐to‐peer collaboration, autonomous community organisation and fair distribution of resources.
This paper contributes to the conceptualisation of knowledge transformation for sustainable education by (a) modelling the key features of blockchain‐supported educational commons; and (b) informing educational practitioners and innovation policy makers who are interested in blockchain applications.
The model contributes to the understanding of an authentic and humanistic knowledge transformation beyond its dominant notion of an instrumental, linear, purely technological driver of educational systems.
The model allows us to envisage a more sustainable transformation in educational practices.
Blockchain Technologies have been known to markets in the last two decades however popular in the Bitcoin, tokenization application only. Tokenization is just a feature of Blockchain, and it has many other important features that can be used in Higher education applications especially in Business Schools of UAE, which is vastly developing as a smart country. Blockchain has the potential as a Disruptive technology to transform business enterprises, governments, and smart cities.
The United Nations Sustainability Goals defines Education as an important component to mitigate the poverty of underdeveloped and developing countries. Hence the social, economic, and educational goals of the UN can be attained through quality education spread to major parts of the globe.
The Research study has identified specific independent variables as the impact of BCT on Education especially the UAE Business Schools. A gap and findings analysis from a literature survey of around 362 articles (mostly from 2018–2022) helped to identify the core research problem: how the BCT can be utilized to enhance the performance of UAE Business Schools? This led to the further research question of: what are important factors that influence BCT implementation in UAE Business Schools, to achieve their objectives? From the literature review, there were five independent variables identified that may influence BCT in UAE Business Schools: System Integration, Organization Readiness, Scalability, Regulations and Security & Privacy. The impact of these independent variables on BCT in UAE Business Schools was measured in the form of research outcomes identified through the literature survey.
The hypothetico-deductive research approach was chosen for the study. This approach was chosen because adequate literature existed to direct the research, cause–effect relationships seemed to exist between the main variables relevant to the study, and there was a definite gap in the knowledge base. A mixed, non-experimental study design that was cross sectional in nature was used to analyze the influence of these variables on Implementation of Blockchain technology in UAE Business Schools. A five-point Likert scale questionnaire containing 35 non-demographic questions was sent to the target population. The survey saw responses from 442 participants (response rate of 23%) in UAE, including Education industry and technology experts. A representative conceptual model on the constructs mentioned above and the responses was developed to map the independent variables’ impact on Implementation of BCT in UAE business Schools. A software package for variance-based structural equation modelling, ADANCO 2.3, was used to investigate the model and test the hypotheses. The model passed all tests for both measurement and structural models. The four of the Six hypotheses that were envisaged were explained and seem to be well supported and influence the Implementation of the BCT in UAE Business Schools. Even though the System Integration and Organization Readiness do not have direct influence on the Implementation of Blockchain in UAE business schools, they do have indirect influence on the outcome through Scalability and System Integration respectively.
The study empirically indicates that while Regulation (RF -> IBC) has the strongest influence on the Implementation of Blockchain in UAE business schools, what is concerning is that System Integration is not significantly influencing this Implementation. This reflects the slow responsiveness of UAE Business Schools to the needs of business and the failure of business schools to fully match up to Industry Stakeholders expectations, aligning the current system to the future implementation system and collaboration of the other users. Future researchers can plunge deeper into this subject and present solutions to bring this situation into alignment for a more complete Implementation of the Blockchain. Security and Privacy, Individual, Scalability, and followed by Reliability (in that order) make the Implementation of BCT in UAE Business Schools possible.
This thesis makes a notable contribution to the theory, the Multilevel Process Integration from the Individual to the National level, and the factors of the Theory of Technology (System Integration, Security &Privacy), Organization (Organization Readiness), and Environment (Regulation, Scalability. This thesis suggests implications for university actors and decision-makers education technology strategists and developers while addressing the limitations of this study and suggesting future research directions, in the context of emerging technology for business schools in particular.
Ethical considerations were of utmost importance throughout the entirety of the research process, and even after its completion. Privacy and confidentiality of the data have been strictly safeguarded.
