Preliminary Instructions

The blockchain might offer an alternative way for individuals to keep track of their educational
accomplishments. This is becoming more important as the variety of ways in which people can
document their learning is poised to increase dramatically in the coming years. Consider the
following credentials:

 High school diplomas

 College degrees (associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate)
 Continuing education units (CEUs)
 Certificates from continuing education departments at colleges and universities
 Certificates from private education providers
 Alternative digital credentials (a.k.a. badges)
 … and anything else people can dream up!

In the past, employers wanted to see documented evidence of degrees and transcripts sent directly
by the learning institutions. But what if a particular person has degrees plus a plethora of certificates,
CEUs, and badges? Things could become quite messy! How can the blockchain possibly help in this
situation?

Assignment Instructions
Given what you have learned so far, write a short essay explaining how the blockchain might be
applied to verifying one's educational accomplishments. You will need to answer the questions
below as you craft your submission, but your final essay should be a cohesive, unified piece of
writing. 

1. What is the item that changes ownership when verifying one's educational
accomplishments?
2. What data needs to be included in each transaction block?
3. Will educational institutions need to be involved in validating degrees and transcripts? How
does the validation process work in a distributed, blockchain environment?
4. If you’re applying for a job and your prospective employers want to see evidence of your
education, how might this work?

Format: Please upload your essay as a Word or PDF file. Aim for a minimum of between 500 and
750 words.
Review criteria
less 
Students must write a cohesive essay (i.e. like a magazine article or blog post) that contains the
answers to the four questions posed in the assignment instructions. There are five points possible
for writing a well-organized essay and five points for answering the four questions.
Blockchain in Education

Nowadays, various kind of certificates can get from various universities in person as well as online.
Sometimes, we may not know that the certificates are real or fake. And hence, the validity and integrity of the
certificates become important in this time. Also, if the person want to prove his/her canonical certificates and
graduations as follows:
1. High school diplomas
2. College degrees (associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate)
3. Continuing education units (CEUs)
4. Certificates from continuing education departments at colleges and universities
5. Certificates from private education providers
6. Alternative digital credentials (a.k.a. badges)

Even in this certification, the canonical chain of the certifications as well as the integrity and validity of them are
important. The need of this can be solve by using Blockchain technology as Blockchain can guarantee the integrity of
the transactions history by using cryptographic hash functions.

When verifying the student’s educational accomplishments, the reference header should include the offered
university code and the student’s educational certification identity number are applying with hash function. Then it will
get the new block header reference to link another certificate.

In each transaction block, the verification number, the student registration number for the course or degree,
the year of accomplishment, the student’s grades should include in the content. For every block header of the
blockchain-data-structure, it must include the root of a Merkle tree containing transaction data, a hash reference to
the header of the preceding block, the difficulty level of the hash puzzle, the time when solving the hash puzzle
started, the nonce that solves the hash puzzle.

The educational institutions need to be involved in validating degrees and transcripts as they are certification
authorities. In a distributed, blockchain environment, every block header must fulfill following validation rules and it
works as follows:
1. It check whether the block header contain a valid hash reference to a previous block or not.
2. It check whether the block header contain a valid root of a Merkle tree containing transaction data or not.
3. It check whether the block header contain a correct difficulty level or not.
4. Check whether its time stamp is after the time stamp of its preceding block header.
5. Check whether It contain a nonce or not.
6. Check whether the hash value of all the five pieces of data combined together fulfills the difficulty level.
The validation rules ensure that only those blocks are added to the blockchain-data-structure for which the hash
puzzle was solved and the computational costs were paid. Then the process ensures that the blocks and the
transaction data are indeed ordered according to the time being added.

As the blockchain-data-structure is same concepts as the public ledger, the other people from the public can read
that transaction history but they are not allowed to modify and write without the permission of the ownership. So, the
student can show his/her educational certifications blockchain to the prospective employers as an evidence of his/her
education. How cool the blockchain technology is? Great!