Lately, I’ve been hosting a lot of online lunch symposiums on blockchain and education, but to be honest, I’m not really sure how to go about it. I don’t know how to put blockchain to use. Since I don’t know, I’ve decided to just give it a try—so I’m going to start taking steps to implement blockchain at Meta University.

Today, I gave a short presentation like that at a meeting between the Cabinet Secretariat’s IT Office and the New Economic Federation. I feel that blockchain could play a key role in realizing Learning of Tomorrow, but I also think the biggest challenge might be that “it’s hard to understand what blockchain actually is.”

The Learning of Tomorrow Church refers to the advancements brought about by ultra-smart technologies—such as the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, and AI—as “Learning of Tomorrow.” This has the potential to bring about changes that reexamine the content, environment, and evaluation of learning, including academic subjects, exams, and schools.

In terms of academic subjects, AI will enable hyper-personalized learning that spans across disciplines. This will require a reorganization of the curriculum. This could call into question the content and very existence of standardized tests and the national curriculum guidelines.

Furthermore, by storing all learning records on the blockchain, there will be no need for exams. This will call into question the very nature of college entrance exams.

These changes will make it possible to design learning environments that transcend the boundaries of educational institutions, such as grade levels and schools. This could even lead us to question the very nature of the school system itself.

　Now, regarding the use of blockchain in education, Learning of Tomorrow also launched a blockchain working group in 2018 to discuss the topic, but the discussions have stalled. We felt it might have been too early.

After researching initiatives in other countries, I have the following three observations:

1. Examples of social implementation at the national or city level are limited to places such as Singapore, Malta, Malaysia, and the U.S. state of Colorado. On the other hand, there are also noteworthy developments, such as China and Vietnam exploring the use of blockchain in education on a national scale. In China in particular, interest in blockchain is growing in response to the rapid increase in online education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2. Most initiatives are limited to issuing certificates, and there are few examples of uses that fundamentally transform the education system. (There are a few scattered examples, such as personalized education through content creation and distribution, and the promotion of learning incentives through the issuance of tokens.)

3. In regions where falsification of educational credentials has become a social issue, discussions are underway regarding the adoption of blockchain technology for issuing certificates. It is questionable, however, to what extent there is a need for this in Japan.

While I understand the convenience of using blockchain technology to issue graduation certificates and the like, won’t its adoption be limited unless it leads to significant cost reductions? Isn’t there a way to use it that would lead to more disruptive innovation in education—in other words, to what’s known as “Education DX”?

Here are the proposals that came up during our discussion on Learning of Tomorrow.

Wouldn’t recording all learning histories—including academic histories—enable a more flexible learning environment and career planning? Isn’t this the path that leads from an academic-credential-based society to a learning-history-based society?

Couldn’t we build a new educational marketplace where lectures and teaching materials are traded in exchange for academic credit? Wouldn’t this facilitate the use of copyrighted works in education?

Might this make it possible to highlight individual activities that were previously difficult to evaluate?

When it comes to research, I believe that properly managing papers and data, along with receiving acknowledgments and notifications from cited papers, could help invigorate research activities.

To be honest, I don’t really care whether we use blockchain or not, as long as we can build a Learning of Tomorrow system. However, the education sector tends to be slow to adopt new technologies. So, we discussed whether it might be worth having a discussion based on the assumption that blockchain will be implemented.

However, as I mentioned at the beginning, I couldn’t quite grasp how to actually implement it. That’s why I decided to give it a try. Last year, I launched a project called “Meta University,” which is about creating a new learning community that transcends the boundaries of traditional universities, and we’ve just started discussing how to implement the things we want to do by incorporating blockchain technology into Meta University.

I wrote that “Learning of Tomorrow” has the potential to bring about changes that rethink the content, environment, and assessment of learning. When I consider what I would like to achieve at a “Meta University” in line with those three elements,

For example, might it be possible to achieve the optimal match between students, instructors, and course materials? Might students receive data-driven, personalized advice on learning and career paths? And might this lead to more affordable and diverse learning opportunities?From an instructor’s perspective, this could create new ways of working—such as providing everyone with the opportunity to teach courses, or allowing instructors to earn income by offering popular courses without needing tenure at a university. Or rather, could this mean that anyone could become an instructor? In other words, could this enable highly personalized, peer-to-peer (P2P) learning?

Furthermore, could we establish a system to certify all forms of learning—including online and app-based learning, participation in workshops and events, and real-world experiences such as internships and volunteer work—and incorporate mechanisms to maintain motivation, such as issuing tokens?Furthermore, could we transform learning from a world where it costs money into one where it generates income? This could enable optimal matching between learning histories and the business world without the need for job hunting. In other words, wouldn’t this lead to the realization of a “society based on multifaceted evaluation, lifelong learning, and learning histories”?

And finally—and this is the very mission of “Meta Universities” and “Learning of Tomorrow”—might it be possible to create learning environments that transcend the boundaries of educational institutions? This is a trend that has already begun with the concept of open badges.At the same time, learning communities are important. It would be ideal if learners could form appropriate learning communities based on shared interests and similar learning situations, rather than belonging to existing organizations. In this regard, isn’t it crucial to have an environment where learners themselves can own their learning data? As a result, might we be able to realize a decentralized learning environment?

That's what I've been thinking about.

The challenges we face in implementing this are:

1. Technology

　　Promoting Understanding and Utilization Throughout Society

　　(Privacy protection, authenticity of data writes, data immutability, standardization, etc.)

2. Education

　　A fundamental overhaul of the system itself

3. Costs

　　Write costs (public model) and a sustainable operational structure (consortium model)

I'm wondering if that's the case—what do you think?

To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure whether blockchain is even necessary to make this happen in the first place.