Klaspad PLC Futarium 2019 – Whitepaper for Education
by Ambrish Bansal, Irina Ursu, Andrea Mocanu, Anna Stelmaszczyk
For the last 40 years, the internet has been a medium of digital publishing and sharing information across the globe. Blockchain is the second generation of the internet which will be the internet of value. Think of Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, they are nothing but value on the internet. A few years back they had zero to very little value, but today crypto currencies are worth several billion dollars. Crypto currencies use blockchain technology. All sectors of industry are investing heavily in this technology.
The Education Industry is struggling to meet the challenges posed by the socio economic and the technical revolution. Excessive use of internet and the availability of information (both legitimate and fake) is changing the way students think and react. The advent of online education is becoming increasingly popular and innovative. The institutions do not have answers to the rising demand for lowcost online education, increased competition and the constant threat of fraudulent providers. All this has put enormous financial pressure on the institutions as they have to spend substantial amounts of money and time on keeping their reputation intact in trying to provide secured transcripts and certificates. Online content creation is also consuming substantial resources of most institutions’.
The students on the other hand are bombarded with innumerable options to pursue their studies and enhance their careers. They also stumble upon fake providers.
The education sector still has to open up to the latest blockchain (secured distributed ledger) technology. Its use will benefit the sector far more than any previous technology.
CASE SCENARIOS OF FUTARIUM (BLOCKCHAIN) IN THE EDUCATION SECTOR
1 – Awarding degrees and diploma certificates using “FUTARIUM”
UK Higher Education’s official service for candidate verification and university authentication and the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), have identified more than 180 bogus providers. The use of traditional documents can increase the risk of data misplaced or deleted. Not only because of human errors, but we must also consider the natural catastrophes such as floods, earthquakes or even wars.
How “FUTARIUM” helps?
“FUTARIUM” offers a simple solution using blockchain. The educational institutions become the creator of the asset which is time stamped and hash tagged on the blockchain. The created document is digitally signed by authorized signatories and these signatures are also recorded. Once all signatories have signed the document “FUTARIUM” sends the blockchain authenticated document to the student who automatically becomes owner of the asset on the blockchain. He can easily share this document with anyone. The shared document can be verified by a simple click of a button.
How does the organization benefits?
Futarium provides low cost, indestructible, quickly verifiable creation of certificates and awards. Besides reducing the cost of production of secured certificates the institution can charge a fee for giving certificates on blockchain.
As the certificates cannot be forged or changed it removes any chance of fraud and helps the institution in protecting and enhancing its reputation.
2 – Creating verified CVs using “FUTARIUM”
According to the UK Higher Education Degree Data check (HEDD) (https://hedd.ac.uk/), around 33% of graduates or job seekers have a discrepancy in their CVs. According to M Whittington Risk Advisory Group UK, in 2016, 80% of CVs had discrepancy, 21% inflate their job titles and another 12% changed their grades.
How FUTARIUM helps?
Any individual can upload his CV on FUTARIUM simply by registering to the blockchain. The information given on the CV is sent to various organisations for verification. The organisations verify the information and this verification is recorded on the blockchain. Once verified the information cannot be tampered with by anyone including the candidate himself. These “FUTARIUM” validated CVs will become the benchmark for trusted CVs.
The benefits: Currently employers spend a lot of time and money authenticating information given on CVs. A CV that has been verified on “FUTARIUM” is transparent and gives all the verification details at no or a fraction of the cost incurred currently. This also saves time.
Sometimes organisations lose a good candidate by taking too much time in the verification process.
The student can share all the “FUTARIUM” credentials with employers who can verify the information with a click of button and offer the job within no time.
Once the information is uploaded and verified on the blockchain it is indestructible and the student will never lose their certificates and job-related information.
3 – Creating contracts and agreements using “Futarium”
Contracts and legal documents are produced every minute around the globe. The process is long and time consuming. In addition, the signatories have to be physically present to sign the documents and their signatures have to be witnessed.
All this costs money and sometimes the delays can cause loss of opportunity.
How FUTARIUM helps?
FUTARIUM is offering blockchain verified contracts where the participants can digitally sign the documents using blockchain. These documents will be tamper-proof, authentic and will not need intermediaries. FUTARIUM verified contracts will be executed faster with proper dates and time stamps and a blockchain validated hashtag attached to them.
How does the organization benefit?
Agreements and contracts can be created, signed and witnessed instantly, increasing efficiency and expediting the work. The created agreement is indestructible and cannot be tampered with. These can be verified on the blockchain and all stakeholders save time and money spent on physical verification and the authentication process.
4 – Lifelong learning and CPD can now be converted to academically recognised educational credits.
Today everyone is talking about Lifelong learning, CPD and the recognition of prior learning. Currently there is no system that can academically assess, validate and award academically recognized credits to such achievements.
How FUTARIUM helps
FUTARIUM is working on ways and means to automate the process of assessment and allocation of academic credits for every training or workshop that individual attends. A patented algorithm to automate this process is already under development.
The benefits: The authentication and award of micro credits opens a completely new revenue stream for institutions. Education institutions can compare the credits stored in the students blockchain based education wallet and offer them academic awards as per the credit bank of the student.
FThe student can collect micro credits on Futarium and exchange them for academic awards. These micro credits can be earned while at work from day to day trainings and experience. The accumulation of credits and academic awards earned due to such accumulations leads to career enhancement and new opportunities.
5 – Verified IP protected work
“FUTARIUM”
Blockchain can allow educators to publish content openly while keeping
track of reuse, without putting limitations on the source material.
Teachers could announce the publication of their resources and link to
them, as well as the other resources they used in creating the material.
How FUTARIUM helps
Futarium will provide the platform to upload the research papers where plagiarism can be checked at the time of uploading. Once the researcher makes the content plagiarism free it can be uploaded to the blockchain with a time stamp, thus creating an indelible proof of creation details.
How does the organization/ researcher benefit? The time stamp and the submission of the research content on the blockchain is transparent and can be verified at any time thus protecting the IP rights. The owner can also share the information in a secured manner and can even create automated process of sharing the information against payment for the use of such copyrighted information
Think of Google, Amazon, Facebook whose early adoption of the internet technology has made them mega companies. The value of blockchain is not only measurable by benefits and cost reduction, but also in terms of reputational enhancement and the possibility of commercial growth in the unexplored territories of ‘Micro credits’ and the possibilities of hyper individualising the educational achievements. Early adopters will reap the benefits and can open NEW revenue streams not heard of before.
Blockchain technology is a moving target. It is still evolving and changing. New versions/updates are being introduced at a rapid pace.
Most blockchains are public and anyone can participate, and network and they use the principles of crypto currency. Unfortunately, this approach needs exceptional computational power and inhibits growth as the scaling up costs are very high.
We selected Hyperledger Fabric which is maintained by the Linux foundation. Hyperledger is most suitable for DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology) business applications like FUTARIUM. Hyperledger differentiates itself from the public domain network.
The key characteristics that make Hyperledger Fabric suitable for implementing DLT based business Application are as follows:
- Modular architecture
- Permissioned Network
- Scalability
- Immutability of smart contracts and transactions.
- Technology without Crypto currency or coin
- Programmable
- No mining
These characteristics ensure that Hyperledger creates trust, transparency and accountability among the participants in the network. The chain code construct available on Hyperledger Fabric can be used for automation of the business processes and building business logics.
THE BLOCKCHAIN OPPORTUNITY AND VISION
Klaspad’s team behind the creation of FUTARIUM has a vision is to eliminate document fraud and give every individual a chance to collect academically assessed and recognized educational credits from day to day learning.
Our vision is to revolutionize the educational system by providing blockchain verified academic credentials having social, corporate and academic recognition globally.
