A blockchain based deep learning framework for a smart learning environment

Abstract

In the contemporary digital age, education is no longer limited to traditional educational environments. Many educational institutions shifted to depend on the smart learning process but expressed concern about this solution due to its various challenges in securing the learning process and learners’ data. By virtue of the most recent technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence, which played a significant role in solving many challenges that faced the educational sector and overcoming issues like fake certificates, manipulation, tracking learners’ activities, and predicting learners’ academic performance. The study proposed a smart framework based on blockchain and deep learning to enhance smart learning processes and provide solutions for challenges in the field. The framework is intended to store the learner’s data on the blockchain through the interplanetary file system and reap the benefits of securing the learner’s data and ensuring its integrity, as well as ensuring the confidentiality and authentication of the users through the wallets that are created on the Ethereum private blockchain platform. Then apply the deep learning model to this secured data to predict the learner’s performance. The smart contract functions also play a role in enabling the university to issue learners’ certificates that are stored on the blockchain to be available and verifiable by all the nodes in the network. Based on the experimental results, deep neural networks were used to model the encrypted data that was stored on the blockchain and predict the learner’s performance and achieved a high degree of accuracy (91.29%) and low loss (about 0.18) in comparison to other studies that depended on the centralized nature of the data. As well, the university blockchain’s functionality was tested, and it successfully returned all the functional requirements and showed its legitimacy.