Abstract:

As one of the disruptive technologies that emerged significantly in the last decade, blockchain has become an interesting topic of research in various projects relying on distributed data and trusted transactions. Blockchain's unique features related to decentralization, immutability, reliability, traceability, consensus, security, and integrity of data have become even more important in applications related to the fields of healthcare, finance, supply chain, and many others. Despite the bright side and various benefits of blockchain technology, its unavoidable association with cryptocurrencies and the volatility of their values based on background operations have also brought some negative popularity to its usage in the general public. Nevertheless, the benefits of blockchain are unquestionable, and the applications of blockchain technologies are rapidly rising. Currently, we can witness blockchain ubiquitousness in many business areas, and education is among them.

The field of education provides numerous opportunities for blockchain applications due to the need for decentralized data management and interoperable transactions based on reliable, immutable, traceable data. Despite this, not many reviews have been written, surveys have been conducted, and analyses have been performed on the current state of applications and usage of blockchain technology in education. Since we have been directly involved in a few of these blockchain applications in education and struggled with finding appropriate resources, we considered it necessary to perform a more comprehensive analysis of blockchain adoption in education.

This paper aims to provide a systematic review of applications of blockchain technology related to the field of education based on the available resources and literature, in this case, several popular databases that collect scientific publications. In our research, we have focused on educational applications and projects developed with blockchain technology and presented use cases that addressed problems that could be successfully resolved using blockchain technology. After retrieving and classifying scientific publications on the topic and selecting the appropriate ones, we have analyzed the described blockchain-based solutions for educational purposes, thus providing a systematic review of applications and accompanying benefits that developed blockchain technology applications brought.

Moreover, we have discussed the risks and challenges of adopting blockchain technology in education applications and presented some of the solutions that could help in resolving them, thus demonstrating the benefits that blockchain technology could bring to the field of education. We believe our discussion can be used as a resource for many stakeholders in the field of education, including researchers, practitioners, and education institutions, when exploring various areas of application where blockchain technology can be successfully implemented. We have also discussed some of the prospective uses of blockchain technology and alternative applications of their functionalities in the education system, thus providing insights into other areas of education where blockchain technology can be proven beneficial. Our analysis presented that blockchain technology in education is still a relatively young discipline but exhibits a lot of potential that could be exploited to bring additional benefits to new applications in the education sector.

Keywords:

Blockchain, education, review.