Abstract:

The challenges of modern education are illustrated by the fourth goal of the sustainable development goals (SDGs): “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Contribution to family income prevents children in poor societies from attending school. Even in affluent societies, people cannot attend school for high tuition fees. Some people become increasingly marginalized and do not have enough opportunity for lifelong learning. One cause of this problem is the limits of the school system itself.

The problem is led by a challenge that founding and operating of school is expensive. The school system has another challenge. Today’s formal schooling system has advantage as regards transmitting knowledge to people in an accurate and efficient manner for a certain period of one’s life. Therefore the traditional education system has greatly contributed to social development in modern society However, the school system is difficult to continuously transmit constantly changing knowledge through a lifelong period. These two challenges cause unavoidable issues that many people in society are left behind. A new type of education system to replace current schools is inevitable.

The learning economy is a new learning model that trades learning outcomes to guarantee and evaluate learning based on market principles. In traditional education systems, schools and teachers are rewarded for teaching. In the learning economy, only learners receive rewards through proactive learning and also schools and teachers are not necessary. It is a substantial difference from the existing education system. This new system enables learners to receive compensation in virtual currency as a reward for learning. This can provide a strong motivation for learners to proactively gain knowledge and to acquire and update their knowledge at a speed that could not be achieved in traditional schools.

Such a learning economy is implemented in this study by using learning logs and blockchain technology. Learning logs include data obtained by close examination of how people have changed in the process of learning in daily life, and comprise three logs such as reflective, experience, and action ones. Reflective logs form part of blogs and social network service (SNS) posts; experience logs record experiences of volunteer activities and work; and action logs record the behavior patterns by using Internet of Things (IoT) technology such as wearable devices. By recording the learning logs in blockchain, an excellent identity and tamper resistance system, it is possible to prove who, when, and what kind of learning resulted in the process. Furthermore, it is possible to handle this intellectual property by using smart contract of the blockchain and then possible to trade this intellectual property in a virtual currency.

This paper proposes a learning economy as a learning model and reports on the experiments results using the prototype of the learning economy model.

Keywords:

Blockchain, learning economy, online learning, lifelong learning, learning analytics.