Blockchain-Based Applications in Higher Education: A

Systematic Mapping Study

Bakri Awaji Ellis Solaiman Adel Albshri
School of Computing School of Computing School of Computing
Newcastle University Newcastle University Newcastle University
Newcastle, UK Newcastle, UK Newcastle, UK
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT database, blockchain stores every transaction between the parties.

The utilisation of blockchain has moved beyond digital currency to Within a blockchain network, a ledger that maintains a record of all
other fields such as health, the Internet of Things, and education. In transactions is replicated and shared with all parties.
this paper, we present a systematic mapping study to collect and Blockchain is also capable of running smart contracts (executable
analyse relevant research on blockchain technology related to the code) [7]. Smart contracts increase the effectiveness of blockchain
higher education field. The paper concentrates on two main themes. solutions and allow for distributed applications to be deployed in
First, it examines state of the art in blockchain-based applications numerous fields for various purposes. Within the education sector,
that have been developed for educational purposes. Second, it smart contracts can be used to build flexible blockchain based
summarises the challenges and research gaps that need to be distributed solutions for the benefit of all participants in an online
addressed in future studies. learning system, including students, teaching staff, and
administrative personnel. For example, it may become possible for
CCS Concepts students and education institutions to contract more personalized
• General and reference ➝Document types ➝General literature digital agreements which specify assignment requirements, time
➝Reference works frames, and grading structures [8].
There are a number of blockchain technology features that make it
Keywords worthy of investigation for enhancing educational systems:
Blockchain; Higher education; Systematic mapping study.
• Immutability: the data stored on the blockchain is tamper-
proof due to the chronological order that data is stored and the
1. INTRODUCTION cryptography that secures and connects blocks.
Within the higher education sector, the traditional system of • Reliability: The decentralized nature of the network means
education has seen significant and continuous improvement that it operates in a more reliable fashion than centralized
through the application of new technology such as the Internet, and systems. There is no central authority that could fail.
the World Wide Web. Web-based applications are being applied to
• Transparency of information is a growing demand. With
improve communication, increase collaboration, sharing resources,
blockchain technology, it is possible to create highly
and promote active learning. Blockchain applications for education
are relatively new, and the number of products based on blockchain transparent decentralized data storage.
is currently small. However, Blockchain has the potential to • Availability: the distributed nature of blockchain
provide many new opportunities. infrastructure means that data is replicated, stored closer, and
accessed more efficiently by owners of the data.
Blockchain was first developed for the Bitcoin digital payment • Trust: Blockchain technology eliminates the need for a trusted
system in 2008 [2]. This emerging technology has since grown third-party service provider to enable communication between
rapidly and has become the subject of intense research in many parties.
industries, research organisations, and universities around the
world [3][8][49]. Blockchain aims to solve the problem of a Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the research
“trusted” central authority having responsibility for mediating topics that have been examined in the field of education within the
transactions between different parties. Centralisation can lead to context of blockchain and smart contract technologies, and to
security problems such as being a single point of failure, as well as identify important challenges that need to be addressed in future
other problems such as cost. The decentralised nature of blockchain studies. To achieve this aim, we selected a systematic mapping
improves trust between parties in a system and eliminates the need study as our methodology. We followed the systematic mapping
for a trusted third party to perform transactions [7]. As a distributed process presented in [7]. We searched for relevant papers in the
scientific databases and then produced a map of the current
blockchain-related applications for education. This map contains
important information that may help to understand the issues and
challenges concerning blockchain for future research projects.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows: Section 2
presents background information on blockchain technology and its
features as well as smart contracts and their structure. This section
also provides some details on current blockchain projects in the
higher education field. The methodology that was adopted in this
study is described in Section 3. Section 4 presents the result of the
search for relevant papers and the classification of topics related to Figure 2: Adding a block to the chain.
blockchain in higher education. Section 5 discusses the results of
the study and answers the research questions. Section 6 concludes The other miners’ nodes in the network can validate the newly
the paper. generated blocks through a consensus algorithm. The second
generation of blockchain has emerged in the form of Ethereum [8],
2. BACKGROUND which allows for building and implementing distributed
This section provides information about blockchain technology and applications. The Ethereum blockchain allows smart contracts to be
its features. Further, this section highlights examples of current built on top of it, and this has opened the door for researchers to
blockchain projects in education. Additionally, it presents a brief integrate blockchain into various fields.
explanation of smart contracts and their structure. Blockchain has generally been divided into two main types: public
and private blockchain [8]. Public blockchain (such as Ethereum)
2.1 Blockchain Technology allows anyone to join and participate in the network. In contrast, in
Blockchain is a distributed database that stores the transactions sent a private blockchain (such as Ripple), only users with permissions
between the participants in a secure and immutable way. can join and participate in the network.
Blockchain is a P2P network that allows nodes (peers) to
collaboratively maintain the network for block and transaction 2.2 Smart Contracts
exchange [16]. A smart contract refers to an event–condition–action stateful
computer program that is carried out between two or more parties
who do not have implicit trust with one another [28]. In other
words, it is a self-executed code that is run to apply roles and
conditions between two or more parties [2]. By applying a smart
contract using blockchain technology, there is not only a reduction
in third-party costs within the transaction process, but there is also
improved transaction security. A smart contract can be either
centralised or decentralised; it can be implemented to run off-chain
in a centralised environment or to run on blockchain in a
decentralised environment [29][51]. Figure 3 presents the two types
of smart contracts.

Figure 1: Blockchain network overview.

Therefore, there is no need for a third trusted party since the
participants can communicate and send transactions between each
other directly. A cryptographic hash identifies the block, and each
block references the previous one, which creates a chain of blocks
(Figure 1). Each block contains several transactions, and the
maximum size of each block varies according to the blockchain
platform type, for example, 1 Mb in Bitcoin and between 20 to 30
kb in Ethereum [42]. The blocks in the chain are immutable and
cannot be changed, which prevents the double-spending problem Figure 3: Smart contract types.
[50].
Historically, the first generation of blockchain was cryptocurrency,
2.3 Blockchain and Smart Contract
which is a digital currency based on cryptography and P2P Applications within Education
networks. One of the concepts integrated into blockchain is mining, In recent years, the role of blockchain applications in education has
which is the process of adding transaction records to the public received increasing attention across several disciplines. Blockchain
ledger of past transactions on the blockchain. The mining process and smart contract technologies are increasingly involved in
requires a miner on the network to generate the new block of education in different means and forms. However, until now,
transactions by collecting those transactions into a block, running a blockchains in education have been primarily used to record grades
mathematical process to verify the block and adding it to the chain and award certificates; far too little attention has been given to the
of past blocks. utilisation of blockchains and smart contracts for building an
infrastructure for the learning process [4]. Some of the current
blockchain and smart contract applications within education are as
follows:
 Digital certificate applications: These applications are
intended to provide greater control over the students’ earned
certificates and to decrease dependence on third-party
intermediaries – including employers and universities – for
storing, verifying and validating credentials. Examples are
Open Blockchain [8] and the Blockcerts project [9].
 Support services applications: These applications are aimed at
establishing a particular cryptocurrency based on Bitcoin for
regulating the market of goods and services in the educational
 field, such as support services, regulated studies, enrolling in 3.3 Screening for Relevant Papers
online courses and training institutions’ micro-contracts with To screen the search results for papers relevant to the study
the digital transaction of economic assets to acquisition books. questions, we followed the search criteria identified in [12]. First,
An example is Edgecoin [33]. we excluded irrelevant papers based on their titles. If the title was
 Earnings applications: These Applications connect learning unclear, we reviewed the abstract of the paper. Furthermore, we
with earnings. In this case, the blockchain is used for storing excluded non-English papers, those without full text available,
the teaching or learning hours and not the digital currency. An duplicates, newsletters and grey literature.
example is the Ledger project [44]. Table 1. Search queries.
There are other potential applications for blockchain and smart Scientific Query Strings
contracts within education, such as for student assessments, online Database
learning, finance and payment, digital rights management, ACM [All: blockchain] AND [All: higher] AND [All:
distributed file storage and identity management. digital education] AND [All:
library university] AND [Publication Date:
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY (01/01/2017 TO 01/31/2020)]
In this study, we used the systematic mapping method described in
IEEE ((((“Document Title”:blockchain) AND
[34] to explore blockchain applications related to education (Figure
Xplore “Document Title”:higher) AND “Document
4). The results of this study may help researchers to identify the
Title”:education) OR “Document
gaps and challenges that need to be addressed in future studies.
Title”:university)
Springer ‘blockchain AND higher AND education AND
OR AND university’
Scopus TITLE-ABS-
Defining Searching Data
Research
Conducting Screening
abstracts for extraction and
KEY (blockchain ) AND TITLE-ABS-
Search infrastructures KEY ( higher education ) OR TITLE-ABS-
Question keywords mapping
KEY ( university ) AND ( LIMIT-
TO ( PUBYEAR , 2020 ) OR LIMIT-
TO ( PUBYEAR , 2019 ) OR LIMIT-
TO ( PUBYEAR , 2018 ) OR LIMIT-
TO ( PUBYEAR , 2017 ) )
3.4 Searching Abstracts for Keywords
In this step, we classified all the relevant papers by using the
Review of Relevant Classification Systematic
scope
All papers
papers scheme map
keywording technique explained in [12]. We identified the main
keywords and contribution of each paper from its abstract.

3.5 Data Extraction and Mapping

This process was conducted to collect the required information to
Figure 4: Steps of the systematic mapping study. address the research questions of this study. Therefore, we designed
the review criteria to contain nine elements for reviewing the
3.1 Definition of Research Questions papers, as shown in Table 2. The review criteria were piloted on a
In this step, we identified the research questions that our study aims
sample of five papers and then applied on the rest of the papers to
to answer. For our study, we defined the following research
extract data.
questions:
Table 2. Criteria for reviewing papers.
RQ1: What are the research topics on blockchains for higher
education? Criteria Description
RQ2: What are the research challenges for blockchains in relation Title Title of the paper
to higher education? Author(s) The author name(s)
Paper type Conference, workshop, journal,
3.2 Conducting Search or book chapter
In this step, we conducted a search for papers relevant to the Paper topic The topic area and subject
research topic: blockchain applications in education. To narrow the Publication date Publication year
focus of our study, we selected the terms ‘blockchain’ and Publication location Country of conference or
‘education’ as the keywords. Furthermore, we used well-known organisation
scientific databases to conduct our search: IEEE Xplore, ACM Paper purpose Aim of the paper
Digital Library, ScienceDirect, Springer and Scopus. These Application implementation System structure and
selected scientific databases index high impact, high quality papers implementation
in the fields of education and information technology. Table 1 Challenges Actual and potential challenges
presents the query strings used to search each database. We focused
only on high-quality papers that had been published in conference 4. STUDY RESULTS
proceedings, journals, workshops, symposiums and books. We obtained a total of 108 articles. In the first stage of the screening
process, we removed 47 irrelevant articles based on our criteria.
Articles were omitted for two reasons. Because we were
concentrating on research of blockchains from a technical
standpoint in higher education, we omitted papers that were not most publications. Approximately 65.63% of the venues were
about higher education specifically. We also omitted papers that technical venues, while 34.38% were educational venues.
discussed the general aspects of a blockchain. After that, 19
additional papers were discarded as duplicates, resulting in 42 Table 3 shows the classification categories of the papers. In this
papers. Thus, we analysed 42 papers for our systematic mapping step, we classified all the relevant papers by using the keywording
research. technique explained in [12]. We identified the main keywords and
classified each paper from its abstract.
20
Table 3. Classification categories.
15
10 Categories Scientific Papers

5 Certificate/degree [4] [6] [10] [14][15][17] [19] [23]

0 verification [24] [25][36] [41]
2017 2018 2019 2020
Student assessments
Figure 5: Number of papers per year. [9][27][39]
& exams

Figure 5 shows the distribution of papers by the year of publication.

It is important to note that all of the papers were published after Credit transfer [40][42]
2016. This shows that this is a modern and novel area of research.
Thus, the number of publications on this topic appears to be
increasing each year, reflecting an increase in interest in the [5] [11][12] [20] [25] [26][31] [32]
blockchain adoption of higher education. Data management
[35] [38][46][47] [48]

Admissions [13][30]

[1] [3][5] [8] [11][18] [21] [37][43]

Review papers
[45]

 Certificate/degree verification: This category included

Figure 6: Geographical distribution of primary papers. studies of blockchain technology that can assist with
validating student diplomas and can provide greater control
The geographical distribution of primary papers is shown in Figure
over how students earn certificates.
6. This geographical distribution, which is spread across 18
countries, shows that the adoption of blockchains in higher  Students assessments & exams: Articles in this category
education has received international research attention. The described automated mechanisms for the production of
greatest number of articles (n = 10, 22.2%) were written by colleges exams and assessment schemes for university students.
or corporations in the United States. Spain took second place with  Credit transfer: This category included research on
three papers (11.1%). Four papers were published in India. The blockchain applications for storing student records and
remaining papers were published in other countries. transcripts and transferring academic credits between
universities.
 Data management: This category contained articles on
Publication Type blockchain applications for connecting students’ records
40 across institutions as well as smart contracts for managing
student data and storing their records.
30  Admissions: These articles proposed blockchain applications
to facilitate students when applying to universities by storing
20 and sharing the admission procedures and required documents
to apply to a particular university.
10  Review papers: These included literature review studies
conducted by researchers during the period defined in this
0
study.
Journal Conference Paper Book Chapter
Table 4 presents the distribution of publications by the challenges
Figure 7: Distribution of publications by type. detected when reviewing the scientific literature included in the
search results.
Figure 7 presents the distribution of publications by type. The vast
majority (77.78%) of these articles were published in conference
proceedings, and four (20%) were published in journals. The
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE) had the
 Table 4. Classification of challenges.

Category
Challenge Student assessments Data
Certificate/degree Credit transfer Admissions
verification & exams management

Privacy [4][15] [41] [39] [42] [5][12] [25][31] [13][30]

Immutability [43] [27] [13]

Blockchain usability [15][17][23] [27] [40] [31][48]

Cost [22][24] [27] [35]

Scalability [17] [42] [12] [26][35]

Consensus algorithms [17] [22][24] [39]

Blockchain platforms [30] [5]

Motivation [22][24] [13]

14 4.5
4
12 13
3.5
12
3
10
10 2.5

8 2
1.5
6 1
0.5
4
0

2 3
2 2

0 Certificate "Degree Verification" Student Assessments & Exams

Certificate Student Credits Data Admission Literature
"Degree Assessments transform Management review Credits transform Student Data Management
Verification" & Exams Admission

Figure 8: Articles by classification category. Figure 9: Classification of challenges.

Figure 9 illustrates the nine challenges presented in the reviewed
papers. The first challenge, with 11 articles, concerned blockchain
As shown in Figure 8, the majority of studies on blockchain privacy. These articles examined different privacy concerns that
applications in higher education focused on the management of may arise with blockchain technology. Further, immutability (with
certificates. Of the 42 publications analysed, 12 (28.57%) focused three articles), a major aspect of blockchains, may become a
on degree verification. Three papers (7.14%) examined blockchain problem when implementing blockchain technology in higher
applications concerning student assessments and exams. The third education. Immutability can make it difficult for educational
application type focused on the transfer of credits and included two institutions to enforce new laws on data storage or correct
articles (4.76%). The fourth application type concerned data inaccurate data. The third challenge involved the complicated
management and had four articles (30.95%). nature of blockchain technology, as stated in seven articles. For
Two of the papers (4.76%) focused on blockchain frameworks to example, certification authentication can become a challenge when
ensure security and protection in the admission systems. Finally, using blockchain technology in education. The cost of using
the sixth type was review papers that examined potential methods blockchain technology was the fourth challenge, with four articles.
of implementing blockchains in higher education. Five articles observed the issue of the scalability of blockchains. As
the number of blockchain blocks increases, so does the processing 5.1.3 Credit transfer
time, which can impact the performance. The third category involved applications for transferring students’
credits between universities. These applications are intended to
Articles four and two focused on consensus algorithms and enable a university to transfer completed course credits to another
blockchain platforms, respectively, and noted that educational university. In this category, applications were presented to transfer
institutions may face challenges when identifying which data and credential records between colleges, establishments or associations,
services need to be introduced in the blockchain network. The final given blockchain’s high security and trust. Srivastava et al. [40]
challenge concerned the reasons for using blockchain technology, proposed a framework to store student records and transcripts that
with three articles noting that immaturity problems, including included an electronic credit transfer mechanism. Hence, students
complicated settings and low usability, have a sustained impact on are able to transfer completed course credits between different
blockchain’s implementation in higher education. universities. Turkanović et al. [42] also proposed a global higher
education credit platform called EduCTX, which follows the
5. DISCUSSION European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System.
According to the publication trend, the utilisation of blockchain
innovation for higher education has been met with increasing 5.1.4 Data management
enthusiasm. As the studies related to this subject have been The fourth category involved data management applications that
relatively few, there is a need for further research examining the can gather, report and assess university data to automate rules,
potential use of blockchains for education. The evaluation of the 42 support decision making and protect students’ identities and their
studies presented here can help in addressing two major research data. Bore et al. [5] examined the initial structure, implementation
questions. and assessment of the blockchain-enabled School Information Hub
by conducting a case study of Kenya’s school system. In addition,
Filvà et al. [11] presented a blockchain-based solution for
5.1 First Research Question automating rules and constraints so that students can control their
RQ1: What are the research topics on blockchains for higher data and ensure their privacy and security. Forment et al. [12] also
education? proposed various actions intended to safeguard students’ identities
and to secure their data through new technologies, including
Although there have been numerus blockchain-based applications blockchain.
developed for educational purposes, few have been utilised by
stakeholders. Such applications can be classified into six 5.1.5 Admissions
categories, as presented in Table 3. The fifth category concerned blockchain applications connected to
university admissions and student registration. Mori and Miwa
5.1.1 Certificate/degree verification [30], for example, presented a digital university admission
The first category focused on specific applications intended to application system that organises study documents and e-portfolios
confirm certificates and verify degrees. This category included all through smart contracts on a blockchain. Curmi and Inguanez [9]
research addressing academic certificates and transcripts for higher also proposed a platform that registers students and includes their
education students. Verification of academic certificates is crucial medical records while ensuring that their sensitive data remain
for employers as well as other authorities to confirm the private, with the information owner in control of access to these
authenticity of an academic degree. Following up with and documents. Moreover, Ghaffar and Hussain [13] introduced a
verifying the status and authenticity of a diploma is difficult, and system for PEC, HEC and IBCC to verify students’ educational
blockchain technology presents a promising solution [43]. The records, enabling students to apply for university admissions
applications in this category tended to focus on authorising through a single platform.
universities to provide students with access to official certificates
and ensuring information privacy. 5.1.6 Review papers
The final category involved literature reviews of studies focusing
Han et al. [15], for example, introduced a unique blockchain-based on higher education and blockchain applications. Overall, eight
method for universities to authenticate and share official education papers examined this topic. In the literature reviews, preliminary
certificates. Budhiraja and Rani [6] also presented the TUDocChain investigations and evaluations were student centred and focused on
platform, which enables academic certificates to be reliably and recordkeeping and sharing using a trusted and safe platform, such
sustainably authorised on a public ledger as a practical solution to as in [1] [8] [18][43] [45].
issue, validate and share certificates.
5.1.2 Student assessments & exams 5.2 Second Research Question
The second category focused on student assessments and exams.
These studies intended to fulfil the quality standards as well as RQ2: What are the research challenges for blockchains in
requirements established in the relevant programmes and curricula. relation to higher education?
The researchers also aimed to create blockchains for online quizzes
Although blockchains have several beneficial applications for
and to fulfil informatisation in higher education. Mitchell et al. [27]
education, researchers continue to face numerous problems in
introduced dAppER, an automated quality assurance mechanism
utilising this technology for education. Hence, several challenges
that uses established internal procedures to develop exam papers
were detected in the reviewed papers.
and their related evaluation schemes.
5.2.1 Immutability
This technology offers a robotised quality affirmation system to
The term ‘immutable’ came up repeatedly in relation to
develop test papers and their appraisal plans, wherein a
blockchains. Blockchain’s immutability results in it becoming
permissioned blockchain protects the tests and sustains the audits’
impossible for the data stored in the blocks to be changed, which is
immutable and trusted ledger. Shen and Xiao [39] proposed a
a crucial aspect of blockchain technology. However, immutability
model that uses blockchain technology to verify students’ answers.
is a major challenge to using blockchain technology for education,
such as diploma revocation. Although this is not common, it can be 5.2.7 Consensus algorithms
used when there are unique circumstances in which diplomas are Because sensitive education information is stored in the
withdrawn. The diplomas that are stored on the blockchain, blockchain, developing a secure blockchain system is a vital
however, cannot be changed because of blockchain immutability research area. Several researchers have focused on developing
[43]. Hence, immutability can decrease blockchain’s applicability consensus algorithms for safeguarding transaction data, including
in terms of students’ sensitive data. This challenge applies Proof of Stack (PoS) and Proof of Work (PoW). Using blockchain
especially to three categories in which students’ information needs technology in education may also include the development of
to be stored on the blockchain: certificate/degree verification, consensus algorithms with the most benefit [24] [39].
exams/assessments and admissions.
5.2.8 Motivation
5.2.2 Blockchain usability Another challenge is a lack of motivation. It is difficult to
Blockchain technology’s usability is also a major challenge in the encourage stakeholders to implement blockchain-based
education field. The technology’s terminology is often unclear, and applications in the traditional systems of education that have now
it is perceived as lacking maturity. Moreover, the user may have to been in place for a considerable time. Thus, further studies on
deal with several complicated settings to ensure security, such as blockchain usability for individuals are needed. Blockchain
primary keys, recovery roots and public keys. It should also be adoption can be improved in the education field through the
noted that a P2P network blockchain includes very different development of usable blockchain-applications [13][22][24].
specifications compared to those intended for individuals, which
can make using blockchains difficult for end users. Thus,
blockchain usability should be enhanced by application design 6. CONCLUSION
interfaces, which allow individuals who do not have technical Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that utilises
expertise to use blockchain more easily [36]. Thus, further studies cryptography techniques and distributed consensus algorithms for
on blockchain usability for individuals are needed. In addition, decentralisation, immutability, and traceability. The properties
blockchain adaptation can be improved in the education field offered by blockchain and smart contracts can lead to several
through well-designed interfaces with simple specifications. innovative applications in the context of higher education. It is
possible to use blockchain technology for education in various
5.2.3 Privacy innovative ways besides managing diplomas and evaluating
It is important to consider how data can be securely accessed and achievements. Blockchain technology shows significant potential
used while maintaining privacy [15]. Blockchain systems use for learners and teachers in terms of its broad application for the
private and public keys to protect user identities. Public keys are design and implementation of learning activities, conducting
publicly visible, and thus the blockchain cannot guarantee formative evaluation and tracking the entire learning processes.
transactional privacy. Thus, blockchain privacy protection However, there have been limited studies on this subject. Thus,
mechanisms have drawbacks that may lead to anonymous abuse. evaluating the opportunities offered by how blockchain and smart
Hence, it is crucial to protect the identities of students by creating contracts can be used to improve learning motivation and
a mapping connection between the students’ pseudonyms and real achievements is difficult. This systematic mapping review study
identities [39]. aims to address this issue, by illuminating existing blockchain
5.2.4 Cost applications for higher education and highlighting the research
Another challenge concerns the cost involved in blockchain challenges involved in implementing blockchain technology. The
transactions, as managing and storing large amounts of student data study results can help future researchers to identify and resolve
on the blockchain can increase mining costs. Hence, it is necessary additional challenges.
to manage development and operational costs of using blockchains
in traditional education systems [24].
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