| Dr Sabrina Caldwell |
We were each asked to provide a one page quad chart on blockchain. I am not an expert in JPEG or Blockchain and feel a little out of my depth in this company. So I will stick to an application for education.
Blockchain for education
1. Use case(s)
- Workers acquiring hundreds of micro-credentials
- Need to validate micro-credentials globally in seconds
2. Key requirements
- Scalability
- Security
- Regulation
3. Potential Solutions
- Open Access Education
- Open Source Software
4. Standardisation
- Technical Standards
- Mutual recognition between instutions and jurisdictions
- Support by professional bodies
The Australian National University introduced Micro-credentials procedures in October 2019 (Worthington, 2019).
During their career a worker may acquire hundreds of micro-credentials. These would need to be validated before the worker could undertake a specific job, or task. With the gig-economy, this may need to be done several times a day in seconds, in a country away from where the credentials were issued. This will require a system which can scale for billions of workers, securely, and be recognized by governments around the world. Blockchain implementation of micro-credentials could be aided by open source software for implementation, and open access education to teach its use.
The report, Blockchain Challenges for Australia (ACS, 2019), listed micro-credentials as a potential application for blockchain, requiring low computational power, a high volume of data storage and users, but low throughput (ACS, p 22, 2019).
References
- ACS, 2019, “Blockchain Challenges for Australia: An ACS Technical Whitepaper”, URL http://bit.ly/acsblock
- Worthington, Tom, December 18, 2019, “ANU Micro-credentials Procedure”, Higher Education Whisperer, URL https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/search/label/microcredential
ps: GovTech Singapore developed OpenCerts in cooperation with the OpenCerts Consortium.
