With a growing cornucopia of digital courses available online, students have their pick. Edtech providers must find creative ways to offer added value and differentiate themselves from the pack. Blockchain in academia provides an appealing, useful, superior solution to store, issue and transfer blockchain student records as well as streamline processes for the registrar’s office.  Blockchain’s strength lies in its transparency and integrity and ability to shore up security for vulnerable school systems.  It’s an elegant solution for a flooded online learning market.

How to be

• Digital credentials aren’t anything new but in recent years, especially during COVID, registration in online courses has skyrocketed. 

• Currently, there are over 3 million students completing online courses. 

• The global eLearning market is expected to double in size from around $250 billion in 2020 to $499.1 billion in 2027.  
• Since 2020, 98% of universities have offered online classes.

• 75% of schools have purchased or are preparing to purchase additional student technology. 
• There was a historic growth of 36.3% during 2020 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10.3% through 2027.

At first glance, the online course market is overwhelming and oversaturated with countless seemingly similar courses, all offering about the same value. Besides the allure of receiving a degree from a prestigious institution and its reputational benefits, what else might appeal to students? For students upgrading their soft skills and technical knowledge, how can a typical course provider create added value?

Education technology providers must find creative ways to crush the competition and dominate in an education market. Prestigious universities must stay abreast of the competition and continue to provide their students with the best experience, to justify the high cost of tuition.  

Blockchain can provide a stark competitive advantage for both markets. Transcripts are available immediately in a few clicks.  Students can access and transfer their records instantly, leaving the power in their hands. There’s no more waiting time, long lines or third-party interactions. 

Students are also further reassured that their credentials are genuine, giving them confidence in their Edtech provider’s credibility and reputation.  Verified students have a distinct advantage over non-blockchain verified applicants for job and academic opportunities since their credentials and technical skills are already vouched for by Educhain. Blockchain prevents fraud, ensuring that your organization’s reputation and brand can be trusted.

Digital badges offer a new way of obtaining a certificate for online students. These digital course credentials will also illustrate a more comprehensive and holistic view of the student’s abilities and expertise beyond simple stats and grades.  They can contain information like course contents, internship letters, projects, photos and other such details. It’s like an online portfolio but fully verified, authenticated and professional. 

The social media component of Educhain provides another marketing avenue for course providers to boost their brand, reach target audiences and engage with their current students in a fun, interactive way. 

Students can advertise their accomplishments online on social media networks, enabling them to network effectively and showcase their skills to a larger audience, which may include future prospective employers. Online providers will also benefit from their student’s marketing activity, and their “ambassador efforts,” which promotes the school organization’s brand and marketing reach as well, encouraging more engagement, and continued registration and new enrollment. 

Turn your record keeping operations into a well-oiled lean automated machine

For many course providers, issuing, storing, verifying and transferring paper records can take up manpower, time and resources. It’s often a chaotic, inefficient process, where records are misplaced or lost and staff are inundated with endless requests and phone calls for verification.  

• Students often have to come in person and wait for weeks to receive paper records. 
• Certain processes may be unnecessarily repeated. 
• Extra manpower is needed during bottleneck periods of course registration. 
• Staff have to manually check course contents like hand stamping things, and revoking expired certificates and correcting errors, all of which takes up an incredible amount of time. 

With Educhain, there’s no longer a need to contact the registrar’s office to request records, or have employers call in to verify records, saving weeks of waiting time and opportunity cost. Staff can change details like renewing an expiry date or registering name changes with a few clicks. Batches of diplomas can be uploaded at once, saving time and money.  Most third party interaction is eliminated.  All these arduous time consuming tasks can be done much more efficiently, saving weeks of turnover time.

Provide impenetrable encryption security and control access 

• 54% [of universities] view credential fraud as a concern with 32% planning to devote more resources to digitization. 

• The Hill reports that in April 2021, “UC was just one of the victims of the international cyberattack, which may have afflicted roughly 100 institutions, also including Stanford Medical School, the Universities of Maryland, Colorado and Miami and Yeshiva University in New York.” 
• Comparitech reported in 2020 that “since 2005, K–12 school districts and colleges/universities across the US have experienced over 1,300 data breaches, affecting more than 24.5 million records.”

In the face of the rise of cyber attacks, data breaches and fraudulent degrees, protecting student’s privacy and records is an urgent priority issue. Course providers have to ensure the authenticity of their certificates to maintain credibility in the face of stark competition. 

Imposters with fake degrees might misrepresent their skills and expertise. Their inability to meet the standard will indirectly affect and devalue your organizations’ credibility and reputation. 

As much as 21% of all degrees are fake, and are easily doctored with a little photoshop by diploma mills. Blockchain provides course providers with bank level encryption and security.  It’s protected by complex mathematical algorithms.  Once uploaded onto the blockchain, information cannot be corrected or changed, ensuring immutability and access limited to permissions granted by the issuer and student. Blockchain and the use of the Educhain app ensures that the information is kept confidentially between the issuer and their students, with approved access only granted to prospective employers and graduate schools. 

Currently, there is an absurd lack of security in school systems, leaving them vulnerable to data breaches. To protect their student’s records and private information, they have to implement a maximum-security system. The data breaches in the recent news could have been prevented with blockchain technology to protect schools from cyber criminals with malicious intent.

Protect your bottom line by cutting costs

Educhain reduces the overall course costs by cutting the cost of a document down from 25$ to 1.50$.  It also lowers the cost of administrative overhead and manpower. The resources and time previously used for routine processes, now streamlined and automated through Educhain, result in savings that can now be reinvested or allocated to course materials, research or high level complex activities. These savings could also be passed on to the students for more affordable tuition fees. Company morale is raised higher, since staff feel happier and relieved from mundane tasks. 

Continuous adaptation for an improved upgraded future

As technology increasingly transforms the world, the education sector will have to adapt to these changing times. Security and reduced government funding will continue to be a pressing issue for course providers. The ability to create a seamless user-friendly journey for students can help course providers prevail over their competition.  The use of technology will make students’ lives easier and allow for greater autonomy and control over their academic journey.  This proactive mindset, self-initiative and self-sovereignty will provide a strong foundation for the rest of their lives.

Strive for a paper-free way. Refuse to accept mediocrity

Most importantly, Educhain simply provides a safer and better way to issue and transfer student records instantly while creating leaner operations and freeing staff to focus on complex tasks. With all these benefits and more, Educhain will transform your organization into a technologically savvy modern facing entity, with a true cutting edge advantage over your competition.