 Thanks. So welcome, as well, to this pre-conference workshop. This will be focused on decentralizing education with the use of blockchain technology. My name is Alexander Mikrygenidis. I'm a research fellow at the Open University in the UK. And my expertise is in technology-enhanced learning. And in particular, I've been working in the areas of personalized learning, self-regulated learning, open education, and open educational resources. And more recently on how education can be decentralized through the use of blockchain technology. This session is related to the Quality Chain Project, which is a European project. I'll say a few more about this in a bit. So this is supposed to be, this will be an interactive session, a hands-on session, meaning that I will do a short presentation first and then you will have the opportunity to try the free online platform that the project has developed and voice your feedback and your comments and suggestions. So as I said, as I mentioned already, this session will be centered around Quality Chain and the Quality Chain platform. So there will be a short introduction first. And then we will have plenty of time for a plenary activity, a hands-on activity that you will be asked to perform on the Quality Chain platform. This will be a very simple three-step sequence of tasks so that you get a very first glimpse of what this platform has to offer. And you will be very welcome to discuss and voice your questions and comments and suggestions based on this activity. Right. So let me start by generally setting out the motivation for this work, for this more general endeavor. So as we all know, we are currently operating in a centralized education model, which is no longer sustainable because, first of all, learning happens increasingly outside the brick and mortar lecture halls, outside schools, colleges, and universities. It happens online within communities of like-minded individuals or by contributing to projects and initiatives in the real world. Learning is also far more international than it used to be, meaning that key education players, open campuses are broad, students travel to different countries to improve their employability prospects or that needs to be an effort to address this mobility. And finally, this is obviously more present and timely and urgent in the post-COVID pandemic world, where education providers usually do not have the remit or the means and capacity to cover the range of activities that learners engage with, which attest to their achievements, knowledge, and skills. So the vision behind this initiative, behind decentralized education, is an education model in which the awarding and validation of qualifications does not occur exclusively under the management of an education institution or an employer. In this paradigm, in this model, individual students, teachers, and peers take ownership of the learning experience and its outcomes, but at the same time, and this is very important, without compromising on the safety, security, and accessibility. So obviously, I should mention that the blockchain has a core role to play as a technology in this vision and in this initiative. We don't need to get into a lot of details about this emerging technology. It's very well known because of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. What it is is essentially a cryptographically secure, a shared distributed ledger. In this ledger, each block aggregates a time stopped batch of transactions, and it's identified by a cryptographic signature. All blocks are buckling so that the chain can be traced all the way back to the very first block created. And as such, the blockchain contains an uneditable record of all transactions. So as I mentioned before, I have been actively involved in the QualiChain project for the past two and a half years. This is a Horizon 2020 project. We started in 2019, and it's due to finish at the end of this year. We are 10 partners, and we are investigating the verification and management of decentralized qualifications for learner empowerment, education, re-engineering, and public sector transformation. We are targeting four key areas. First of all, lifelong learning. This is the area where I am leading a pilot regarding the decentralization qualifications and the use of these qualifications in order to support lifelong learning. We are also exploring smart curriculum design, meaning this curriculum, higher education curricula, that are adaptable to the needs of the learners and also of the job market. We are also targeting public sector staffing. We have some national agencies like ASEP in Greece who are doing recruitment at a national level for the public sector and want to optimize their services, the recruiting services that they offer to the public, for example, in order to identify fraudulent qualifications and generally speed up the validation and the verification of qualifications. And finally, we are also exploring the area of HR consultancy and competency management services. So the lifelong learning pilot, this is the pilot that I am leading on behalf of the Open University. We are looking specifically into how we can offer transparent and demutable accreditation to lifelong learners. And we are also looking into how we can offer personalized recommendations to lifelong learners so that we can help them in their personal and also in their professional progression. So this is a very high level overview of the main use case that we are investigating within this pilot. We are looking into the main actors being the lifelong learner and also the educational institution. The lifelong learner studies online courses and receives smart badges. These are open badges which are blockchain based and they offer immutable and instantly verifiable accreditation. And they also contain the key skills that the learner has acquired through their lifelong learning journey. So on top of this data, which are stored on the blockchain, we are able to offer personalized recommendations about jobs and courses. We are offering specifically recommendations about jobs that are a complete match or a partial match to the skills of the learner. And for those jobs that the learner is missing some skills, we are also offering recommendations about courses which will offer to the learner these missing skills. And the whole personality portfolio of the learner is hosted on the, it's based on the blockchain. This, I won't go into a lot of technical detail but also this architecture includes other technologies as well. For example, on top of the blockchain, we also use other technologies such as solid bonds. This is a new technology pioneered by Tim Berners-Lee in order to store the personal data of the learner which is not stored on the blockchain. So the blockchain only contains a hassle, they are pointers to the data which is stored elsewhere. In this way, we also address self-solver and identity allowing the learner to control their identity data because his identity is not controlled by a central entity, by an educational institution, but the learner themselves have control of this identity. And also we are able to allow the learner to control their learning assets. All the data associated with their learning journey, all their qualifications and achievements. And we are able to allow the learner to control who can access this data, which third parties can access this data, for example a prospect employer, also who, for how long they can access this data and in what ways they will be accessing this data. Right, so where we are now is we are currently launching the Quality Chain Platform. This addresses the requirements and also the scenarios of the project pilot. And we are piloting the Quality Chain Platform and engaging stakeholders through dedicated workshops like this session and also through other opportunities and online channels, for example open online courses and webinars. And we will be collating and publishing the lessons learned best practices from this initiative. We are also organizing a special issue on the blockchain-based decentralized solutions for learner empowerment, education, re-engineering and public sector transformation. And this will be published in the in a new Elsevier journal, Blockchain Research and Applications. This is an open access journal, but all the author fees are covered by the editorial team. So this is all, so the special issue will be published as gold open access without any fees being paid by the authors. The submission deadline is February of next year. And we'll have all the final decisions on the papers accepted by May of next year. So if you are interested in this research area, do get in touch with me. I am the leading guest editor for this special issue. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Right, so this completes the first part of this session. At this point, we will then have the activity, the hands-on activity that I mentioned before using the blockchain platform, but before we do that, I will open the floor to any questions or comments you have already. You can either type in the chat or you can unmute your microphone and ask your question. I see that Steve has raised his hands. Go ahead, Steve. Hi, is my microphone working? Yes, I can hear you fine. Have I answered correctly that the assets are stored centrally or on the blockchain? So you were talking about restricting access to the things that they've created. So the student isn't storing that themselves, and then the hash is verifying it, but that's actually stored on the blockchain or elsewhere. So the blockchain will only have the hashes to data being stored elsewhere. The storage can be anything, it can be whatever the learner chooses. So as a recommended decentralized approach, we have, as I mentioned before, the solid storage, which is completely decentralized, and it can be hosted anywhere, for example, on the mobile phone of the learner. And it works like a personal Dropbox, but your data is not controlled by an entity like Google or Dropbox. But equally, yeah, this can be stored on a central, on any other type of storage that the learner chooses to use. The infrastructure that guarantees the newtability and the verification process of this data is obviously, of course, of the blockchain, where all the data pointers are, and where someone, for example, an employer can check the validity of a certain certificate of a qualification that is being submitted to them. Does that help? Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you. Okay, I can see Marlies. I'm not if I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Yes, that's correct, Marlies. Thank you. I'm just wondering, so I understand the idea of the ledger and blockchain. I work as a learning designer, and I think one of the problems to overcome with this is how you translate qualitative data into quantitative data, if you will, because especially when you're talking about personalized learning and kind of that smart curriculum, I think that's quite a hurdle to overcome in terms of the type of experience you need with creating those types of learning journeys, if you will. Could you expand on that a little bit more in your project, how you are approaching that problem? So we are trying to provide some scaffolding to the lifelong learners journey by way of offering some recommendations about the next steps, what should I study next, or which jobs are suitable for me. And the data where we base these recommendations are essentially the skills that the learner is acquiring by studying courses and gaining, being awarded badges and certificates, and also the skills that the peers are looking for, and they are including their in open zone positions. Of course, there are several other dimensions. We have not touched, for example, on the collaboration that could, on community aspects and collaborative aspects between learners and potential, and then tutors, where, again, the blockchain can help. For example, you can have a reputation-based system where you can find tutors, the best tutors for a particular, in order to gain a particular skill, in order to gain some, in order to gain certain qualifications. A reputation system that will be based on the blockchain, and, again, it will work with reputation tokens. So there are several things that we are keen to address, even after this current project, which is essentially what we'll be doing after this Horizon 2020 project comes to an end at the end of this year. Does that sound something that you might be interested in, or have I lost you completely? No, it does. It's interesting, actually. I hadn't thought about the tutor in relation to that, so that was definitely interesting. We're looking very much into what type of triggers would you put into your materials, and we're talking at the moment about making the learner visible, because we're not using anything like a blockchain yet, so it's not fully automated, so we still have human interpretation of that data at the back end. But I do think it's definitely something, as a learning designer, that I want to dive deeper into going forward, because it's going to become more and more important to learn how to set those triggers and then get the right data from it that is interpretable as well, if you see what I mean. So definitely very interesting. So I would certainly like to know more about your work, at least. So feel free to please do get in touch. Any other comments, questions before we move on to the next bit? So in the interest of time, let's move forward. So in this activity, through three very simple steps, you will have a first glimpse of the platform that we have built within the QualiChain project. This is a platform that is specifically about blockchain-based qualifications, and we are piloting it within these different key areas that I mentioned before. So in our case, we will have a very simple scenario of registering for the platform, which is the first step. I will paste the links in the chat so they are easy to access. So the first two steps are here. Thanks Steve for putting the link to the course already. So in the login form, this is the second tab, the create new account tab. For the purpose of this activity, of this exercise, please select the jobseekers-learner role, which you can see here. I think I can draw on this on my slides. And then the next step, as soon as you register, will be to enroll for a course, which is related to this session, to this workshop. This is for me to be able to to award you the smart buds, which is related to this session. So I'll wait for 10 minutes until you have the chance to do this. As soon as I see you enrolled in the course, I will also be awarding you the buds. I can see we've got a question from Steve in the chat, is what do we select under organization? There's no need to select any organization, I mean you can leave that big blank. So it shouldn't require you to fill in to select an organization, but if you must, let me see, you can either type in your organization or select something from the drop-down, but I highly doubt that. Just seeing that it's my email address, it doesn't work. Like form doesn't seem to like me having a dash in my email address. So the organization field is not mandatory, as far as I can tell, as long as you select the job seeker or learner role. If there is a bug there and it doesn't let you move on, then just select any organization, doesn't matter. But normally this shouldn't stop you from registering. Steve, what was the problem with your email again? Which character? Does it... Okay, so I'll feedback that to our developers to be able to allow these special characters in sorry about that. So this is one of the reasons that we are actually doing this exercise and I am very grateful for all of you that are engaged in this activity. This is not only for you to have a look at the services that this platform offers, but also from our side, we are very keen to know your comments and ideas, but also the very little bugs and problems that will inevitably arise. Okay, we'll have a look at that. Thanks, Steve. For the time being, if you could use a different email address, that's fine. For the time being, I think you can use any email. There's not going to be... We have a temporarily disabled verification of the email itself, so it doesn't matter if you put the right email there. It will still let you register. We've done this to speed up a bit the registration process while we are still fixing bugs on the platform. Okay. Yeah, I've gone ahead and used a different email address. Yeah, it's fine. It doesn't even have to be a valid email address for the time being. I can see that Tilly has already registered for the course, so I'm awarding her the the buds of this course. Thanks very much. Although I can't find anything to read on the course, is there anything to read? No, no, there isn't. Okay, just checking that I'm not missing something. No, no, no, that's fine. I mean, this is just a skeleton course. This is just a skeleton like a wrapper for the buds, essentially. I could possibly add the slides. I have my slides there later on, if that helps. But for the time being, there's not much to read there. So where do I see my badge? Let me paste that in the chat. So this is actually the next step. In this activity. So this is the link. And there's also the tab smart budges, a link called smart budges on the top of the menu bar. So basically, if you go to that page, if you go to the smart budges page, you can see on your right-hand side the budges that have been awarded to you. And by clicking on the buds, you can actually see the main data of the buds. This is, in this case, this budge is awarded to the participants of this of the quality chain events that the opening university is organizing. You can see the skills that are associated with these buds. And also there is a green button for validating the buds. This is something that, for example, a third party can do on your behalf. You can do it yourself. You can validate your buds. But also when you submit this qualification to a third party, like an education institution, where when you are applying for a course or a prospect employer, they can press this button and validate your credentials. So this is a very, very simple scenario where you complete a course, you gain skills, and you can approve these skills essentially instantly with a click of a button. And this is important. One thing that I should also mention is that this permanent record, this record stays permanently on the blockchain, even if the awarding bud, even if the university, the open university, for example, stops, ceases to exist. So this can optimize, this can streamline the verification process, in the case that the awarding body has changed their name, they are not the same entity anymore, they have merged with another entity, and they cannot be contacted in a straightforward way, which is very common these days. For example, my master's degree was awarded from UMIST, that was the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, which no longer exists. It merged with the University of Manchester quite some time ago. So if I had a smart bud on the blockchain, then I would not, that would be very easy for me to prove the validity of my master's degree. So I'm seeing that some more people have registered for the for the course, so I'm assigning badges, so that you can have a look and you can have a look at their data and validate them. While I'm doing that, if you have any questions or comments, I'll be happy to answer them. So yes, Steve is asking, how do I prove who I am on the blockchain with the login we just created? So ideally, you would already have an identity on the blockchain. So this could be provided by an educational institution or it can be provided by the governing body of the blockchain. We are, for example, in this case, in the case of higher education, of the higher education pilot that we are conducting in Greece and in a few countries, we are looking into the seal authentication, which lets, which uses the, let me check again, it uses an external provider for proving, for identification, management, let me check. I think it's the, yes, it's the edge you gain infrastructure, infrastructure offered from agent. So this is across Europe. This is a syndication of universities offering logins. So this, they would, they could essentially provide, they would, they would prove that someone is who is saying they are. But again, yeah, but then again, yeah, this, it doesn't have to be one central entity. This can be, you can have an identity which is, which is validated against the governing body of, of the, of the blockchain. Or it can be, yeah, something, something which is provided by an educational institution or an employer or an association, a network of, of education institutions. Tilly is asking if the qualifications have monetary value, then can this be hacked? Ideally not. So, of course, the, like every other technology, the blockchain is not full proof 100%. It's nearly there. So there haven't been many cases of, of, of, of blockchains being hacked. Although this is not, this is not something unheard of. But at least this is, the blockchain generally provides some, provides this, this, this guarantee of trust and security between the transactions conducted between different parties. So in short, my answer is that it should not, someone should not be able to hack these credentials because they are checked against the immutable records on the blockchain. Let's see. I'm checking to see if anyone else has been, has registered for the, for the course. So, all in all, this is, these are the very simple steps that I wanted you to, to, to carry out on the platform today. I want, I will not get, I'm not going, I'm not going to the more complex aspects of, of what this platform has to offer. And there's a lot more behind, besides being awarded and validating badges. So let me see Marlies saying that, saying that she has registered. So Marlies, if you could go to this course, I'll paste it again in the chat. But then, and if you enroll for this course, then I will be able to, to award you the, the smart badge. So beyond this very simple scenario that we, that we have seen here today, the, the platform is offering some more, some additional services. For example, you can, if you, if you start populating your CV with skills, then you will start receiving recommendations about courses and jobs. And there's other, and there's some other, some additional services as well, which are more tailored to the other, to the other scenarios, to the other pilots that we are conducting within the, within this project. I can see you, Marlies, and I'm awarding you your badge right now. So you'll be able to see it in a minute in your, in your badges, in the badges section of this, or the platform. So this, I hope this has been, I hope this has given you a first glimpse of, of this, of this ongoing endeavor into decentralized education. I think we can draw this session to a close, unless there are more questions. I will encourage you to, to explore further the platform. I will encourage you to follow us, to get in touch with me and also follow us, follow the project on social media. We are very keen on listening to your views. This is why I will also be sending around in the next, within the next day or so, a questioner to those of you who have registered on the platform, where you will be able to, to evaluate this, this, not only this platform, but generally this initiative as a whole. And with this, I will let you a few minutes earlier. It's quite a nice day today. So I will let you carry on with, with your work, or go out for a walk. And I will also wish you to enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you all for, for attending this. Thank you ever so much for that.