2019 IEEE International Conference on Smart Internet of Things (SmartIoT)
A Blockchain System for E-Learning Assessment and Certification
Chuyang Li, Junqi Guo*, Guangzhi Zhang,
Yaofei Wang, Rongfang Bie
College of Information and Technology
Beijing Normal University
Beijing, China
guojunqi@bnu.edu.cn
Abstract—Nowadays, the applications of blockchain technology
spring up rapidly, providing opportunities for solving the
weaknesses in online education field, such as the complexity of
e-learning assessment, the lack of a unified e-learning
assessment standard and the insecurity of digital education
certificates. In this paper, we propose a blockchain system for
e-learning assessment and certification, which includes an
entirely new network structure on the basis of the combination
of the public and private blockchains, as well as four specific
smart contract schemes for the realization of the e-learning
assessment and credit exchange, the digital certificate issuance
and secure storage, the digital certificate verification and the e-
learning voucher allocation, respectively. The proposed system
has been demonstrated as a promising candidate solution to
establish a fairer, healthier and more open e-learning and
online education environment.
Keywords-blockchain, online education, smart contract, e-
learning assessment, education certification
I. INTRODUCTION
With the process of education informatization in the era
of big data, one significant change is the transformation of
education mode from the traditional classroom-based
teaching-and-learning to an online way, which brings the rise
of various e-learning (electronic learning) or online
education platforms (such as MOOC [1], Coursera [2],
XuetangX [3] and so on). As the most important way of
online education, e-learning is popular for its no-limitation in
both learning time and space as well as diverse forms of
learning, which has become an effective way to share high-
quality educational resources and encourage self-learning in
society. However, challenges which still exist in e-learning
and online education cannot be ignored, such as complexity
of e-learning assessment, lack of a unified e-learning
assessment standard as well as insecurity of e-learning digital
certificates.
Currently, some studies have shown that it is feasible to
create a more open and credible online education ecosystem
by means of the blockchain technology [4]. However, unlike
the application of blockchain in the financial industry which
has detailed methods and specific schemes, the application of
blockchain in online education is still in its infancy, lacking
of the practical application cases or theoretical research
examples [5, 6].
In this paper, we consider the solutions of the problems
in online education together with blockchain technology, and
propose a blockchain system for e-learning assessment and
978-1-7281-3488-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/SmartIoT.2019.00040
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Yunchuan Sun
International Institute of Big Data in Finance at
Business School
Beijing Normal University
Beijing, China
yunch@bnu.edu.cn
certification, including an network structure based on the
combination of the public and the private blockchains, and
four detailed design schemes of smart contracts for the
realization of the e-learning assessment and credit exchange,
the digital certificate issuance and secure storage, the digital
certificate verification and the e-learning voucher allocation,
respectively. Comparing with the traditional e-learning and
online education platforms, the proposed system exploits the
advantages of its structure and functional modules to
establish a fairer, healthier and more open e-learning and
online education environment.
II. RELATED WORKS
While e-learning model brings breakthroughs and
convenience to the traditional education industry, it also
grows challenges or risks in the fairness, security and
openness of online education at the same time. The main
problems in e-learning and online education can be
summarized as follows:
x Complexity of e-learning assessment. Due to the
particularity of e-learning, its assessment not only
includes evaluating the learning outcomes of
learners through traditional methods (such as final
exams), but also needs to combine with the
evaluation of their learning process by analyzing
learners' various e-learning data(such as length of
learning time, online discussion activity and so on)
[7]. However, the diversity of e-learning data causes
the complexity of e-learning assessment. There is an
urgent need for an autonomous e-learning
assessment model to reduce the burden on online
educators and enhance the fairness of the e-learning
assessment.
x Lack of a unified e-learning assessment standard.
E-learning assessment standards vary widely among
different e-learning platforms and even among
different courses on the same e-learning platform.
The lack of a unified assessment standard makes it
impossible for a learner's e-learning achievements to
be certified and transferred into recognized credits or
qualifications, which will greatly dampen the
enthusiasm of learners and discourage the
development of online education [8].
x Insecurity of e-learning digital certificates. Most
of the certificates obtained by e-learning are issued
and stored in the form of digital certificates, which
are more convenient to be queried than paper
212
 certificates, but also tend to be stolen and tampered
because of the hidden dangers of internet (such as
hackers). At present, the security of digital
certificates still depends on the centralized
management of the Certificate Authority (CA)
ecosystem. However, the credibility of CA
ecosystem is gradually decreasing and approaching
the end of its life now [9].
In recent years, as one of the most revolutionary
emerging technologies, blockchain technology provides
opportunities in solving the problems above. As one of the
most revolutionary emerging technologies in recent years,
blockchain has become a hotspot both in academic
researches and commercial applications. The blockchain was
first proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto in his paper named
Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system in 2008 [10].
The key technical points such as distributed ledgers,
consensus mechanisms (e.g. PoW [11], PoS [12], DpoS [13],
PBFT [14, 15], etc.), timestamp and encryption mechanisms
(including hash encryption algorithm such as SHA256 [16],
and the asymmetric encryption algorithm for digital
signature [17] such as ECDSA [18]) and smart contracts [19,
20], form the advantages of blockchain as decentralization,
anonymity, auditability, security and persistency. In
particular, smart contracts give the blockchain advanced
programmability, enriching the functions that the blockchain
can achieve and greatly expanding the application range of
the blockchain, such as auto-pay, digital rights management,
financial services (including cryptocurrency wallet controls,
automatic payment of insurance claims, etc.) [21], Supply
Chain Management (SCM) [22] and smart grid [23].
With the arrival of the Phase 3.0 of blockchain [24], the
innovative idea of applying the blockchain technology to the
field of education has emerged and further promoted some
enterprises and universities to carry out various pilot works
in specific application directions. The University of Nicosia
(UNIC) [25] is committed to maximizing the potential of the
blockchain in education, and it is the first university which
started to accept bitcoin tuition (in 2013), to offer MOOC
courses on cryptocurrencies and to internally issue academic
certificates based on the blockchain in bitcoin (in 2014). The
Media Lab Learning Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT) [26] began using the Blockcerts
standard to issue digital certificates to social communities in
2015, and then in June 2017, developed a blockchain-based
learning certificate platform and used the Learning Machine
(LM) Certificate to issue diplomas to the student of MIT
Media Labs and Sloan School [4, 5, 6]. In addition to
universities or colleges, the number of companies offering
certificates on the blockchain may increase in the near future.
In 2016, Sony Global Education (SGE) [27] announced that
it has developed an internal certificate issuance system based
on blockchain technology, and in 2018, Sony began to
deploy its own blockchain service offerings on its hosted
Global Math Challenge [28] with 150,000 participants from
around the world.
The application scenarios of blockchain in education can
be summarized as e-learning records and assessment, global
education knowledge database construction, education
213
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
certification security and self-verification, secure tuition
transactions, as well as educational fund allocation and
tracking [5]. At present, the research status of the blockchain
in education is still in its infancy, lacking mature application
cases or theoretical support. It is even more difficult to find a
directly relevant reference about blockchain-based online
education systems. Reference [29] based on the issue of
credit distribution and certification for online education, a
blockchain-based solution EduCTX was proposed, but only
solved the security problem of credit storage. The credits
obtained by learners in EduCTX are still controlled by the
education authorities unilaterally, which does not solve the
challenge of decentralized e-learning assessment. Therefore,
the new system proposed in this paper aims to take the
advantages of blockchain technology to achieve
breakthroughs in online education applications, solving the
problem about e-learning assessment and credit exchange,
digital certificate issuance and secure storage, digital
certificate unmediated verification, as well as e-learning
voucher automatically allocation.
III. SYSTEM NETWORK STRUCTURE
In the traditional blockchain-based cryptocurrency
system, all the network nodes are in a same role and totally
equal with each other in authority, among which there are
only simple transfers of tokens in the system. There are three
main categories of blockchain according to its
decentralization level [10]: public blockchain, consortium
blockchain, and private blockchain. Public blockchain is
completely decentralized but runs slowly in the process of
network transmission and block reading and writing, while
private blockchain chooses to increase the speed of the
network and reduce the cost of reading and writing by
sacrificing decentralization.
Differently, in the blockchain-based e-learning system,
the network structure needs to support the realization of
various educational functions, which is more complex than
the process of transactions. Besides, due to the particularity
of the educational process, the user nodes in the network
need to be separated into at least two different roles,
educators and learners respectively, which means the
network model with single node role and single-type
blockchain is insufficient to apply in e-learning systems.
In this section, we combine both the public and the
private blockchain structures to complement each other, and
apply the combination in online education to build a
blockchain-based e-learning assessment and certification
system. Besides, comparing with traditional blockchain
systems, our blockchain system for e-learning assessment
and certification has totally different designs in the node
roles and network structure. A detailed description is given
as follows.
In the system we designed, the network allows user
nodes in two kinds of roles to join and exit, and each role has
its specific authorities:
1) Learning Users: shown as the red nodes in Fig. 1.
Anyone who wants to learn online in our system can apply
for a personal account and join into the network as a
learning user node. There is a Certificate Wallet and at least
one Course Credit Wallet under the learning user's personal
account. The credits generated by online learning activities
of the learning user in the system is added into his/her
personal Course Credit Wallet. After finishing one course’s
study, the learning user can use enough course credits to
exchange the digital certificates of the corresponding
courses, and the learning achievement score of the
certificate is obtained and accumulated into the Certificate
Wallet for later exchange of the corresponding voucher
rewards at the same time.
Figure 1. The network structure of proposed blockchain system for e-
learning assessment and certification.
2) Education Authorities: shown as the blue nodes in
Fig. 1. Different kinds of schools or other education
institutions (such as universities, private schools, training
institutions of specific skills, etc.) can join the network as an
education authority node and give online courses or exams
in our system. The education authority node can write the
learning assessment rules of its own courses into each
corresponding smart contract for course credit calculating
just before the courses are officially opened to the learning
users. Once a smart contract is submitted by the education
authority and recognized by all its learning users, the smart
214
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
contract is deployed on the blockchain of the proposed
system. After that, because of the autonomous execution of
the smart contracts, the education authority is no longer the
owner of the smart contract, and does totally not have to get
involved into the course learning assessment and
management process. In addition, only the education
authority nodes have the permission to issue valid digital
certificates of their own courses in the system.
According to different node roles and the relationships
among them, we design the network structure of our
blockchain-based e-learning assessment and certification
system, including three kinds of networks and two types of
blockchains. With the help of the illustration of Fig. 1, the
detailed description of the network structure of the proposed
system is as follows:
1) Learning User Network (LUN): The LUN is a fully
decentralized P2P network composed of all nodes of
learning users who join our system for e-learning activities,
shown as the biggest red area in Fig. 1. All information
about the learning data records, learning achievements and
digital certificates of each learning user corresponds to
his/her personal account identity. Learning users can
anonymously transmit messages with their own account
identities through LUN to have a communication or
discussion with each other.
2) Education Certification Network (ECN): The ECN,
shown as the blue area in the center in Fig. 1, is a fully
decentralized P2P network composed of all nodes of
education authorities in our system. Corresponding to ECN,
there is Education Certification Public Blockchain (EC
Public Blockchain), shown as the blue blockchain-icon in
Fig. 1. All the nodes in ECN participate in the management
and distributed storage of EC Public Blockchain. When an
education authority issues a new digital certificate, the
content of the certificate is broadcast to all education
authority nodes across ECN and be verified through
consensus mechanism. A verified digital certificate is
encrypted by its issuing authority as a digital signature and
then written into EC Public Blockchain for permanent
preservation.
3) Learning Assessment Local Networks (LALNs, and
the Learning Assessment Local Network of education
authority X is shortened as the LALN-X): Each LALN is a
local network dynamically constructed by one education
authority in our system, shown in Fig. 1 as an area with the
purple outline surrounding a node of education authority
and all the nodes of its real-time learning users. In the
LALN-X, the node of education authority X is the center
node of the local network together with each node of the its
real-time learning users as an adjacent node of itself. Each
real-time learning user can obtain resources and upload
learning data of corresponding courses of education
authority X in the LALN-X. Corresponding to the LALN-X
of education authority X, there is the Learning Assessment
Private Blockchain X (LA Private Blockchain-X), shown as
a purple blockchain-icon near the LALN-X in Fig. 1. The
learning data of each learning user in the LALN-X is
automatically assessed and transferred into course credits by
triggering the smart contracts deployed on the LA Private
Blockchain-X, and then the course credits together with the
original learning data are packed into blocks and
persistently stored the LA Private Blockchain-X as
references for issuing digital certificates in the future.
In addition, the learning users can invite employers or
other third parties to temporarily access EC Public
Blockchain to verify their obtained digital certificates for job
applications. The process of certificate verification by the
employers or the third parties can be totally unmediated
(which means the participation of any education authorities
is unnecessary during the digital certificate verification
process), which can improve efficiency in job recruitment.
IV. DESIGN OF SMART CONTRACTS FOR SYSTEM
FUNCTIONAL MODULES
Based on the network structure presented above, the
proposed system has three functional modules, which can be
simply summarized as follows respectively:
1) E-learning assessment and credit exchange module:
This functional module acts in each LALN, generating
course credit blocks and adding into the corresponding LA
private blockchain.
2) Digital certificate issuance and secure storage
module: This functional module runs in each LALN and the
ECN. First access the LA Private Blockchain in LALN,
settle the current course credits of the learning user and
decide whether to issue the digital certificate. If the credits
are sufficient that meeting the requirement of course
completion, the education authority generates the digital
certificate, which is stored into the EC Public Blockchain
TABLE I. SMART CONTRACT DESIGN OF E-LEARNING ASSESSMENT AND CREDIT EXCHANGE MODULE
after finishing double digital signature and the consensus
verification in the ECN. The third-party organization can be
invited by the learning user to temporarily access the EC
Public Blockchain, and then use the public key of both the
learning user and the education authority to decrypt and
verify the authenticity of the user’s digital certificates.
3) E-learning voucher allocation module: This
functional module runs in the LUN using a smart contract,
regularly counting the learning achievement score of each
learning user in the LUN at a specific time period, and
allocate e-learning vouchers automatically according to the
proportion of the learning achievement scores. The vouchers
can only be self-used in the proposed system by the learning
user.
A. Module of E-Learning Assessment and Credit Exchange
For any education authority X in our system, it can create
and deploy Course Credit Generation Contract X (CCGC-X)
on its LA Private Blockchain, the sub-contract which can
automatically calculate learning users’ specific course credits
based on the scoring rules of multidimensional e-learning
data (like lengths of learning time, test grades, online
discussion activities, etc.) written in it.
Besides, we can also learn from the concept of School
Credit Bank, to set common standard credits in the system in
order to establish a unified e-learning assessment system.
Education authorities can deploy their Standard Credit
Exchange Contracts X (SCEC-X) on their own LA Private
Blockchains, the sub-contracts which can automatically
exchange specific course credits to the common standard
credits in the system. The exchanging rules for standard
credits can be formulated and managed by all education
authorities in ECN.
The smart contract of this function module is designed
and executed as follows (see Fig. 2 and Table I):

When learning user login the system: START

INITIAL: login = true, timer == 0, // the login status and the login time
crs_credit = 0, std_credit = 0, // the new course credit and the new standard credit
learning_data[ learn_time = 0, test_score = 0, discuss_time = 0, post_num = 0,… ];
1 While login == true and timer <= 0.5 hour: Update learning_data ;
2 Check If login == false or timer == 0.5 hour Then:
3 MKT = Merkle_Tree(learning_data);
4 Set address = CCGC_X_ADDR;
5 Send learning_data to address: Excute crs_credit = CCGC_X(learning_data);
6 If crs_credit != 0 Then:
7 Set address = SCEC_X_ADDR;
8 Send crs_credit to address: Excute std_credit = SCEC_X(crs_credit);
9 End If
10 User_CC_WALLET.CCredit += crs_credit; User_CC_WALLET.SCredit += std_credit;
11 credit_block = Package (User_ID, MKT, crs_credit, X, std_credit);
12 Add credit_block to LA_PRIVATE_BLOCKCHAIN_X;
13 Initialize(learning_data);
14 End If
15 Check If login == true Then: Turn back to 1 with timer = 0; End If

215

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

Figure 2. Module of e-learning assessment and credit exchange.
Step 1: Login initialization. When the learning user
login the system, the account login status is activated, the
new course credit and the new standard credits are initialized
as 0, and the system starts to record the data of e-learning
process (like length of learning time, test scores, length of
discussion time, number of user’s posts, etc.).
Step 2: Record of the e-learning data. During the
learning user login, the e-learning data is updated every half
hour (the frequency can be changed according to the specific
conditions of the course), and the data Merkle tree is
generated. In addition, the e-learning data updating and the
data Merkle tree building can also be executed immediately
when the learning user submits a logout request.
Step 3: Calculation of the course credit. CCGC-X is
triggered automatically after each updating of the data, and
the newly accumulated course credit is calculated based on
the new e-learning data.
Step 4: Exchange of the standard credit. After the
current course credit calculation of CCGC-X finishing, the
SCEC-X is triggered automatically to exchange the course
credit to standard credit in the case that the course credit is
not 0.
Step 5: Credit accumulation into the Course Credit
Wallet. The course credit and the standard credit is
Figure 3. Module of digital certificate issuance and secure storage.
216
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
accumulated into user’s Course Credit Wallet. The learning
user's account information (like the user ID), the Merkle tree
of e-learning data, the newly accumulated course credit (with
a mark X of the corresponding education authority for the
future check) and standard credit is packed into a new credit
block, which is added into the LA Private Blockchain of
education authority X further.
B. Module of Digital Certificate Issuance and Secure
Storage
The learning user can submit a certification application to
education authority after finishing the course study, and the
education authority checks the course credit balances of
learning user. If the course credit balances have reached the
requested amount for course completion, a digital certificate
with information in detail is generated and then digital-
signed by the education authority and the learning user one
after another. The digital certificate with double digital
signature is recorded permanently in the EC Public
Blockchain as a new digital certificate block. At the same
time, the credits for the course digital certificate are deducted
from the Course Credit Wallet, and the learning achievement
score corresponding to the digital certificate is counted into
the Certificate Wallet of the learning user.
The smart contract execution process of this function
module is presented below (see Fig. 3 and Table II):
Step 1: Settlement of the course credits. When
education authority X receive a course certification
application from its learning user, it implements the course
credit settlement by checking the balances of the learning
user’s Course Credit Wallet in its LA Private Blockchain-X.
If the credit balances are sufficient, a certain number of
course credits are deducted from the Course Credit Wallet
for creating a digital certificate with detail information (such
as the owner, issuing authority and time, corresponding
course name and course type, as well as the certificate level
or grade if necessary), and then the implementation goes
straightly Step 2, otherwise the certification application is
rejected and the process is terminated with the reason that the
credits are not enough. Once a digital certificate is created,
the corresponding learning achievement score of this
certificate is add into the learning user’s Certificate Wallet
as a basis for future learning rewards.
 TABLE II. SMART CONTRACT DESIGN OF DIGITAL CERTIFICATE ISSUANCE AND SECURE STORAGE MODULE

When learning user submit a course certification application to education authority X: START
1 Check If balances(User_CC_WALLET) >= EduX_CC_Amount Then:
2 User_CC_WALLET.CCredit -= EduX_CC_Amount.CCredit;
3 User_CC_WALLET.SCredit -= EduX_CC_Amount.SCredit;
4 cert = create_digital_cert[User_ID, X, issue_time, course_info, cert_level,…];
5 User_Cert_WALLET.Score += query_learning_achievement_score(cert);
6 h_cert = hash(cert);
7 v_cert = [cert, encrypt(h_cert, EduX_pri_key)];
//the valid certificate signed by education authority X
8 h_v_cert = hash(v_cert);
9 c_cert_block = [v_cert, encrypt(v_h_cert, User_pri_key)];
//the final digital certificate with double digital signature
10 Broadcast in ECN: Excute con_result = EC_PB_CONSENSUS_M(c_cert_block);
11 If con_result == true Then: //confirmed by consensus mechanism
12 Add c_cert_block to EC_PUBLIC_BLOCKCHAIN; //issue and storage
13 End If
14 Else: Send reject_cert_application(‘Insufficient course credits.’) to User;
15 End
Step 2: Digital signature of the education authority. employers or third-party organizations independently, using
The education authority X has a unique pair of public and the address of users’ digital certificate blocks in the EC
private keys generated by the key generator when joining the Public Blockchain and their own personal public keys
proposed system. After the public key of education authority getting from the learning user, as well as the public keys of
X is generated, it is published in the system for further the education authorities which can easily obtained in the
verification. The education authority X encrypts the hash system.
value of the digital certificate H(cert) by using the private
key, completing the digital signature of issuing authority. C. Module of E-Learning Voucher Allocation
The signed H(cert) together with the confirmed original In order to encourage the learning users and reward
certificate information, constitutes a valid digital certificate. outstanding learners in our system, a Voucher Allocation
Step 3: Digital signature of the learning user. The Contract (VAC) can be executed every quarter in LUN to
learning user encrypts the hash value of the valid digital allocate a corresponding amount of e-learning vouchers
certificate creating in Step 2, marked as H(v-cert), again with according to each user's learning achievements during just
the personal private key, so as to finish the digital signature this quarter. The digital certificates obtained in the proposed
of the learning user. The original valid digital certificate and system can be divided into two types: level certificates and
H(v-cert) with user’s signature constitute the final course non-level certificates: the level certificates record
digital certificate block. corresponding level ranks according to the course grades of
Step 4: Storage of the digital certificate block. The the learning users (such as A, B, C, A+, B-, etc. similar to the
new digital certificate block with double digital signature is course's digital grade records), while non-level certificates do
broadcast in the ECN by the education authority X. If all not classify grade ranks but only certify that the learning
education authorities in the ECN reach a consensus, the users have passed the course. Due to differences in type,
digital certificate block is added into the EC Public course major, course difficulty and other factors, the scores
Blockchain and stored safely. of learning achievement corresponding to different
As the various digital certificates obtained by the learning certificates are not the same (the score calculation of level
users in the system are publicly stored in the EC Public certificates should also consider the actual rank of each level
Blockchain, and the public keys of all education authorities certificate, ensuring that the higher the level rank, the higher
are also published in the whole system, the authenticity of the score). Since the numbers and types of digital certificates
any certificate information in the EC Public Blockchain can obtained by the learning users are various, different amounts
be straightly verified by decrypting with both the of learning achievement scores accumulated in their personal
corresponding public key of the education authority that Certificate Wallets can directly reflect the differences of their
issued the digital certificate, and the personal public key of own achievement amounts. Based on that, a total amount of
the learning user who owns the certificate. Based on this, the e-learning vouchers can be allocated automatically and fairly
digital certificate unmediated verification process during the through the execution of VAC, by the proportion of the
job application and recruitment can be realized in the learning achievement score of each learning user to the total
proposed system. The learning users can invite the score of all users in the entire LUN. To avoid malicious
employers or third-party organizations that they are applying profit or trading behaviors, the e-learning vouchers can only
for, to temporarily access to the EC Public Blockchain. The be used to offset the tuition fees for paid courses in our
verification of digital certificates can be completed by the system, and cannot be withdrawn or transferred to others.

217

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 TABLE III. SMART CONTRACT DESIGN OF E-LEARNING VOUCHER ALLOCATION MODULE
When a quarter of learning is completed: START
INITIAL: V_TOTAL_AMOUNT; //the total amount of the e-learning vouchers
1 LUN_Score = sum(ALL_User_Cert_WALLET.Score):
2 For each learning user Do:
3 Excute User_v_amount = VAC(User_Cert_WALLET.Score, LUN_Score, V_TOTAL_AMOUNT);
4 Sent vouchers(amount = User_v_amount) to User_account;
5 Zero(ALL_User_Cert_WALLET.Score);
6 End
Figure 4. Module of e-learning voucher allocation.
The smart contract execution process of this function
module is as follows (see Fig. 4 and Table III):
Step 1: Calculation of total learning achievement
score in LUN. When a quarter of learning is completed, the
scores in every learning user’s Certificate Wallet is sum up,
the result of which is the total learning achievement score of
the whole LUN.
Step 2: Automatically allocation of e-learning
vouchers. For each learning user account, LUN executes
VAC to calculate the amount of e-learning voucher the user
deserved, and finish the automatically voucher allocation.
Step 3: Clearance of Certificate Wallets. The learning
achievement scores in all the learning users’ Certificate
Wallets is cleared to zero for a new start of next quarter’s
calculation and allocation.
D. Comparative Analysis
Different from traditional blockchain systems, the
proposed system is a complementary combination of public
and private blockchains, reduces the complexity caused by
the large node scale of the public blockchains. As the
learning assessment process of each educational authority is
carried out in its own local network (LALN) and
corresponding private blockchain (LA Private Blockchain), a
real-time assessment of e-learning and the storage space
saving can be realized for the high speed and low cost of the
218
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
private blockchain, which ensures assessment dynamic and
efficiency.
And comparing with traditional e-learning systems which
are based on centralized databases, using the distributed
ledger and cryptography technology of the blockchain, it is
possible to permanently store educational achievements and
ensure that they are credible, safe and cannot be falsified.
The certificate issuance and storage process is carried out in
the global network (ECN) and the corresponding public
blockchain (EC Public Blockchain), which guarantees the
credibility and validity of the digital certificates, the
openness and transparency of the certification process, as
well as the convenience and effectiveness of digital
certificate verification for employers and other third-parties.
The application combining both public blockchain and
private blockchain effectively promote system structure
optimization. Besides, in the process of e-learning
assessment, the analysis and storage of e-learning data, the
generation and exchange of course credits as well as the
credit accumulation of account Course Credit Wallet are all
automatically completed by the smart contracts. In the digital
certificate verification process, the employers or third-party
institutions can verify the authenticity of the digital
certificates directly by using the public keys of the
corresponding education authorities opened in our system.
Both of the two processes are totally autonomous without
relying on an education authority as an intermediary.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we propose a blockchain-based e-learning
assessment and certification system, which can be effectively
employed in online education scenarios. We present a new
network structure on the basis of the combination of the
public and private blockchains, which not only breaks the
limitation of the single node role in the traditional single-
blockchain systems with high flexibility, but also fully
retains the security and credibility of the blockchain
technology, which thus creates a fairer, healthier and more
open online education environment. Meanwhile, the multi-
chain application pattern of the proposed system is similar to
the emerging concept BlockNet (the Internet of Blockchains),
which can increase the value of the storage and information
interaction in blockchains, creating exponentially more
capabilities and possibilities for the blockchain ecosystem.
Besides, the proposed four specific smart contract schemes
in detail are also meaningful for the practical use of
blockchain technology in education.
 In addition, as an innovative way that combine online
education and blockchain technology together, the proposed
system also has great potentiality in the future educational
informatization application scenarios such as unification of
global e-learning assessment standards, creation of lifelong
learning passports, as well as promotion of poverty
alleviation in education and so on. In the future work, we
plan to further improve and practice our implementations of
the proposed system, and focus on the implementations of
smart contracts for each functional module, providing new
application cases for blockchain in online education.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is sponsored by National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Nos. 61401029, 61571049, 61472044,
61472403, 61601033), “Educational Big Data R&D and its
Application”–Major Big Data Engineering Project of
National Development and Reform Commission 2017,
Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Education (
BJAICFE2016IR-004 ), the BNU Graduate Students’
Platform for Innovation & Entrepreneurship Training
Program (No. 3122121F1), the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities (2016NT14), and by SRF for
ROCS, SEM.
REFERENCES
[1] MOOCs, http://mooc.org/, 2016.
[2] Coursera, https://www.coursera.org/, 2019.
[3] XuetangX, http://www.xuetangx.com/global, 2013.
[4] Q. Li and X. Zhang, “Blockchain: A Technology to Win Open and
Trust in Education,” Journal of Distance Education, vol. 35(01), pp.
36-44, 2017.
[5] A. Grech and A. F. Camilleri, “Blockchain in Education,” Inamorato
dos Santos A(ed.) EUR 28778 EN, 2017.
[6] X. M. Yang, X. Li, H. Q. Wu and K. Y. Zhao, “The Application
Model and Challenges of Blockchain Technology in Education,”
Modern Distance Education Research, vol. 02, pp. 34-45, 2017.
[7] X. Lei, C. Pahl and D. Donnellan, “An evaluation technique for
content interaction in Web-based teaching and learning
environments,” Advanced Learning Technologies Proceedings, The
3rd IEEE International Conference on. IEEE, 2003.
[8] Y. F. Hu and N. Z. Wu, “The Authentication and Conversion of
Online Learning Achievement: Obstacles,Values and Strategies,”
Adult Education, vol. 38(08), pp. 27-32, 2018.
[9] J. O. Malchow, G. Benjamin and V. Roth, “New Directions for Trust
in the Certificate Authority Ecosystem,” 2018.
[10] S. Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system,”
Consulted, 2008.
[11] D. Fullmer and A. S. Morse, “Analysis of Difficulty Control in
Bitcoin and Proof-of-Work Blockchains,” 2018.
219
Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSITY OF LECCE. Downloaded on June 14,2021 at 09:28:29 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
[12] W. Li, A. Sébastien, J. M. Bohli and G. Karame, “Securing Proof-of-
Stake Blockchain Protocols,” 2017.
[13] X. Gong, H. Liu, G. Liu, and X. Li, “An optimized layout method
based on genetic algorithm for DPOS,” IEEE International
Conference on Imaging Systems & Techniques, IEEE, 2018.
[14] M. Castro and B. Liskov, “Practical Byzantine fault tolerance,”
Symposium on Operating Systems Design & Implementation, 1999.
[15] H. Sukhwani, J. M. Martinez, X. Chang, K. S. Trivedi and A. Rindos,
“Performance Modeling of PBFT Consensus Process for
Permissioned Blockchain Network (Hyperledger Fabric),” 2017 IEEE
36th Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS), IEEE,
2017.
[16] G. Ilias, C. Cas and K. B. Rasmussen, “When the Crypto in
Cryptocurrencies Breaks: Bitcoin Security under Broken Primitives,”
IEEE Security & Privacy, vol.16(4), pp. 46-56, 2018.
[17] F. Tschorsch and B. Scheuermann, “Bitcoin and Beyond: A Technical
Survey on Decentralized Digital Currencies,” IEEE Communications
Surveys & Tutorials, vol. 18(3), pp. 2084-2123, 2016.
[18] D. Johnson, A. Menezes, and S. Vanstone. The elliptic curve digital
signature algorithm (ecdsa)[J]. International Journal of Information
Security, 2001, 1(1):36–63.
[19] Z. Zheng, S. Xie, H. Dai, X. Chen and H. Wang, “An Overview of
Blockchain Technology: Architecture, Consensus, and Future
Trends,” IEEE International Congress on Big Data (BigData
Congress), IEEE, 2017.
[20] B. M. Gültekin, E. Zeydan and S. S. Arslan Blok, “Zincir
Teknolojilerine Genel bir Bakıs¸: Çalıs¸ma Prensibi, Fırsatları ve
Zorlukları An Overview of Blockchain Technologies: Principles,
Opportunities and Challenges,” 2018 26th Signal Processing and
Communications Applications Conference (SIU), IEEE, 2018.
[21] D. Tuesta, J. Alonso and N. Ćamara, “Smart Contracts: the Ultimate
Automation of Trust, Digital Economy Outlook,”
https://www.bbva.com/wpcontent/uploads/en/2016/11/Digital_Econo
my_Outlook_Oct15_Cap1.pdf, 2015.
[22] S. Huckle, R. Bhattacharya, M. White and N. Beloff, “Internet of
Things, Blockchain and Shared Economy Applications,” Procedia
Computer Science, vol. 98, pp. 461-466, 2016.
[23] M. Scherer, “Performance and Scalability of Blockchain Networks
and Smart Contracts,” Umea University, Sweden, 2017.
[24] D. Peters, J. Wetzlich, F. Thiel and J. P. Seifert, “Blockchain
applications for legal metrology,” IEEE International Instrumentation
& Measurement Technology Conference, IEEE, 2018.
[25] UNIC Blockchain Initiative: MSc in Digital Currency,
https://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/about-the-program/, 2017.
[26] The Media Lab Learning Initiative of MIT,
https://learn.media.mit.edu/.
[27] “Sony develops system for authentication, sharing, and rights
management using blockchain technology,”
https://www.sonyged.com/2017/08/10/news/press-blockchain/,
August 2017.
[28] Global Math Challenge, https://www.global-math.com/, Sony Global
Education.
[29] M. Turkanovic, M. Holbl, K. Kosic, M. Hericko and Kamisalic,
“EduCTX: A blockchain-based higher education credit platform,”
IEEE Access, vol. 6, pp. 5112-5127, 2018.