American Council for Education Receives Funding to Explore Blockchain

The American Council for Education (ACE) last week stated that it had received funding from the U.S Department of Education for exploring blockchain in the Education sector. To be more precise, it will be exploring how to implement credentials to share the data between educational institutions and employers; simultaneously offering learners control over their data.

Further, the Government stated that the Education Blockchain Initiative is just a part of a long term effort to offer learners the control of their educational documents. Besides, it anticipates the role of blockchain to certify corporate training accomplishment which ropes in 87 billion dollars in annual spending. Around 738,000 unique credentials are offered in the U.S.

The Education Blockchain Initiative is intended to identify and evaluate how blockchain can enhance the flow of data between educational institutions and employers at the same time. It also aims to empower individuals to transform educational issues into economic opportunity. Additionally, it will incorporate the launch of a competitive challenge for funding the pilot program at the end of the year.

President of ACE, Ted Mitchell said,

This work is about exploring the potential of blockchain technology to give learners greater control over their educational records. It’s about enabling more seamless transitions between and across K-12, higher education, and the workforce. This initiative will explore how this nascent technology can break down barriers for opportunity seekers to fully unlock their learning and achievement.

The initiative’s lead and ACE’s chief Learning and innovation officer Louis Soares remarked that ACE is very excited to lead this initiative and it will make sure that the learning from the project can be accessible over educational institutions. He further added that blockchain has a great potential to connect learning in diverse areas and to help students to accomplish their workforce and educational goals.

Additionally, this initiative starts with the development of research paper which will review the present use of blockchain in the education sector and simultaneously identify opportunities and application that can improve equity in education and workforce insights. Further, it will identify more opportunities and challenges in this sector.