IIT Kanpur has started using blockchain technology to award digital degrees, developed in-house and touted as a revolutionary technology for the education sector. The technology is already being used in the financial sector.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a system on Tuesday to award students blockchain-based degrees in electronic form. The degrees can be verified worldwide and are unforgeable, the IIT Kanpur director said.
The institute developed it as part of the National Blockchain Project. PM Modi told the convocation later that technology is the future and getting priceless gifts from prestigious institutes such as IIT Kanpur.
Find out everything you need to know about blockchain-based digital degrees and how they will affect the education sector in the future.
Decentralized technology:
Blockchain operates on a decentralized model, which means the control does not reside with a central agency but rather with a network of nodes. If a node is compromised, the data will still be protected.
Blockchain records data sequentially and stores it with a timestamp. The previous information can’t be altered, only amended by adding a new block. This makes tampering with the transcript very difficult.
Maintaining student records:
With blockchain technology, you can digitize student records and give students remote access to them, simplifying maintaining student records. Maryville University says blockchain technology can simplify the verification process.
In the case of transfer students, when sharing records with employers or granting degrees, an institute can do so with a few clicks instead of going through lots of paper documentation.
Help in preparing curriculum and grading:
Blockchain technology also enables teachers to execute a specific curriculum when certain conditions are met with its algorithms. Students can program lessons and tasks into a blockchain, and the algorithm can verify when they have completed each task and provide them with the next.
Teachers can grade students using blockchain technology based on their responses to exams – the algorithm considers questions, answers, and scores.
Lowering costs:
Blockchain technology will enable learning to be more affordable. It will require less manual intervention, thus reducing the need to hire more staff. Bitcoin is an example of how technology is already being used in the financial sector.
Challenges
One of the primary challenges of using blockchain technology for any purpose is security. But increased security does not mean that blockchain is not vulnerable. It also eliminates the possibility of modifying student records for legitimate purposes. Scaling the system beyond a certain level is also limited, as adding more blocks will slow down the speed of transactions because each transaction requires peer-to-peer verification.
