Page 127 - Handbook of Deep Learning in Biomedical Engineering Techniques and Applications

Chapter 4 A critical review on using blockchain technology in education domain 115

Credits earned Credits earned Smartcontract
Total credits earned
by student 1 in by student1 in from University 1 from University 1 &
University 1 University2 & 2 2
to recognize credits
Figure 4.8 Blockchain for globalization of education.

• Tracking the current position of alumni/achievement of fac-
ulty and maintaining their records is possible through BCs.
• Parents’ consents can be collected in a decentralized and
secure manner. Consent from parents to meet their wards could
be securely stored. Thus, only authorized people can meet the
students after obtaining consent from parent once [30].
• Copyrights management/IP management preserves the
ownership rights using the BC. E-books copyrights and owner-
ships can be managed and billed based on usage [31].
• Examination review: Permissioned BCs can improve on the
privacy of auditing exam papers [32].
• Lifelong learning that supports management of accreditation,
tutoring, and ePortfolios can be made secure using the BC
technology as in Fig. 4.8 [33].
Major challenges encountered include scalability and security
challenges. This chapter discusses scalability challenges and
proposed solutions for the same.

6. Scalability challenges

Although BC technology is highly suitable for e-governance, it
faces many challenges. Scalability of P2P BC network is major
challenge. One of the major issues in using conventional BCs
for education domain includes the scalability of transactions.
To improve on the scalability of transactions, reduce transaction
fees, and improve the speed in public BCs (like Bitcoins), the
following approaches can be used:
(a) Block size [34] can be increased to hold more transactions/
block (for example, to 8 MB from 1 MB)
(b) Offchain: Use offchain solutions as in lightning networks[.].
Such second layer chains over the primary BC layer and
enables nodes to transact using bidirectional channels after
validation. Once certain constraints are met, these transac-
tions are written to a block in the primary BC. This improves
the speed and scalability of microtransactions. Using
offchains [35] makes the university BCs, faster, scalable and
usable as suggested in the following: