Promises and challenges of Blockchain in education

Abstract

Blockchain is arguably the next technology-mediated socioeconomic mega trend after the ongoing era of Net Neutrality and Big Data. This theoretical paper explores blockchain technology and its impacts on education. It is argued that we cannot take for granted that the network neutrality, popularized accessibility of the Internet and its influence on education will remain as we know it today. Blockchain promises, among others, a greater control over financing and investing in education, implementing instructional projects, a certification/accreditation system and learning. Education blockchain with its distributed ledgers would set novel standards of crypto-learning and crypto-administration that are acceptable across organizations and nations, enhancing thus the objectivity, validity and control of information without being compromised by socio-economic instabilities. The slow rate of adoption of blockchain technology in education reflects the rate in the fields of finance and management but, at the same time, it poses a few critical challenges such as lacking tangible incentives for technology maintenance or ‘blockchain mining’ (inward sustainability) coupled with a rather feeble orientation to collective development of education (outward sustainability).