Blockchain for Microcredentials

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society (ACS) in Sydney. I am a member of the ACS Blockchain Technical committee and taking part in a workshop with people from industry and academia. We were looking for use cases, so I suggested education, specifically blockchain for micro-credentials.

Educational qualifications much shorter than current diplomas and degrees is a hot topic in Australian vocational and higher education. What takes this beyond a theoretical discussion is New Zealand recognizing Micro-credentials from 22 August 2018.

A NZ micro-credential is equivalent to about 1 to 8 weeks study. So in addition to accumulating perhaps a half dozen macro-credentials during their career, an individual may have hundreds of micro-credentials. It would be cumbersome to manage these on paper, or through a centralized computer system.

The micro-credentials may then be automatically checked for some jobs by automated systems. I will touch on this in my talk on mobile education for the Computer Society of Sri Lanka  National IT Conference (NITC 2018),  2 to 4 October. Students could study and be tested via their mobile device and then their digital certificate provided via the same device. 

E-learning Missing from CSIRO's List of Sunrise Industries

Horton, Devaraj, McLaughlin, Pham, Naughtin and Hajkowicz (2018) have identified seven "Sunrise Industries" in ASEAN and neighboring countries. Curiously this report, from CSIRO and Data 61, does not identify education as a sunrise industry, despite it being Australia's third largest export. There is strong growth in demand from the region for quality education. In a report released around the same time as CSIRO's, the AI Group (p. 5, 2018) point out that digital transformation of the economy will require new skills of the workforce, changes
to education systems.

The industries identified are:

1. AI and automated systems
2. Financial and regulatory services technology
3. High value nutrition
4. Next generation energy storage and distribution
5. Cyber-physical systems security
6. Personal health and ageing
7. Digital infrastructure and connectivity

References

Ai Group (2018). Developing the Workforce for a Digital Future: Addressing critical issues and planning for action, Australian Industry Group. URL https://cdn.aigroup.com.au/Reports/2018/Developing_the_workforce_for_a_digital_future.pdf

Horton J, Devaraj D, McLaughlin J, Pham H, Naughtin C and Hajkowicz S (2018). Sunrise Industries: A snapshot of seven emerging industries in the formative stages of growth within ASEAN and neighbouring nations. CSIRO, Brisbane. URL http://www.data61.csiro.au/~/media/D61/Files/SunriseIndustriesReport.pdf

Teach Our Researchers How to be Entrepreneurs

Part of the funding previous cut from CSIRO and NICTA/Data61 has been restored in the Government's
2016 Innovation Statsment. I suggest some of this should go to training the researchers in innovation, entrepreneurship, commercialization and communication. These organizations have been able to carry out research, but have a poor track record in turning the results of research into products and services. The reason for this poor performance, I suggest, is in part because the researchers have seen it as someone else's job to take their work and turn it into a commercial venture. That attitude needs to change and the best way to do it is to teach the researchers how commercialization works, with courses on innovation and entrepreneurship, where they are required to practice communicating with a non-technical audience.  I am designing a course to be delivered via mobile devices to help with this.