Digital Credentials and Blockchain – Pathway to International Cooperation

Digital credentials or DCs - in the education sector - are digital documents that describe learning outcomes and qualifications achieved by individuals throughout their lives. Primarily, their widespread use in the future could tremendously increase the speed of application processes, both in education and the world of work. At the same time, it could effectively put an end to - the surprisingly real - phenomenon of fake credentials. This is because DCs bear the potential of automatic and instant validation and verification. One way to put this in practise is using a combination of cryptographic methods and a Blockchain.

Reviewing several ongoing, international projects in this area, we found that this approach may not only be technologically advantageous over alternative solutions, but, based on the Blockchain's "decentrality-by-design", also a catalyst for cooperation between geographically distributed and heterogeneous education and training providers. A network of shared data both requires and fosters a network of trust, which can, in turn, form the basis of a growing network of shared ideas and solutions.

In this session, the experts behind three of the projects we studied - DigiCerts, the Digital Credentials Consortium and EduCTX - will, first, briefly introduce their respective approaches, focusing on credential issuance and verification. They will also mention the main challenges, in their opinion, that their (or all) DC projects are currently facing. This spark should ignite the following panel discussion, which may further address the expectations both of and towards different stakeholders when it comes to making DCs a success, such as students, institutions and employers. Despite the time constraint, we will also try to discuss at least a few questions coming from the audience.

The session is based on our upcoming publication "Tamper-proof and instantly verifiable digital credentials: The Blockchain as an initiator of international cooperation" as part of an HFD-edited collection. (Title translated from German, we aim for additionally providing an English version by the end of the year).