This set of stills illustrates the manual integration of a blockchain based digital certification system into an awarding body’s business processes. There are a range of possible integrations available from manual, semi auto all the way to automatic issuing of digital certificates to learners in cohorts (that would be the desired goal). All this is underpinned by the biometric identification of the user – to see the full story please read our white paper at https://myskills.org.uk/my-skills-blockchain-white-paper/
Step 1 User Home Page Mobile View – users can use both web and mobile versionsStep 2 Web View – User starts to create a claim for a qualification – a HND in Business. ONce the user presses the green button the request is sent to the awarding bodyStep 3 User Home Page Web View – Claim is recorded in the system but not send to the awarding body / SQA / College – so APPII icon appears as greyStep 3 Web View – User has created a claim for a HND and gone back in to the system and sent the request for the HND – so APPII icon is now yellow = waiting waiting for a response. The user has also done the same for a set of School Qualifications also set at yellow statusStep 4 This is what the awarding body verifier sees as a qualification claim in their dashboard. If they are happy they will click the green button to award the certificate to the users blockchain accountStep 5 After the verifier at the awarding body has accepted the claim this is what they see in their dashboard – accepted = greenStep 6 The users claim to have a verified qualification has been accepted and now appears in their home screen as green = accepted and verified.Step 7 The verified qualification is now available to the user to include in their CV builder to share with peers and in job applications. End
This screen movie demonstrates the verification of an SQA qualification manually in the test environment of the APPII blockchain system. Behind the scenes it uses processes and information that are closely similar to the way existing requests for a replacement paper certificate are handled.
This represents the first stage of integration between APPII and awarding body qualification system – a manual operation. There are a range of levels of integration available from semi-automatic to fully automatic issuing of digital certificates to cohorts of students.
After quite a bit of work, the draft White Paper has been published. You can find it here. The next steps are to gather feedback and create a final version before creating the generic model for the adoption of digital certificates.
So far, the project has been fascinating to work on – turning up a lot of ‘unexpected outcomes’.
Although the technology ‘trigger’ for moving to digital certificates is not very complex or advanced (with or without blockchain). The bigger issue is social acceptance, the hype and noise surrounding blockchain does not help either but the biggest obstacle is tradition – ‘the way things are done round here’. This is one of the reasons we are not proposing to replace paper certificates but instead complement them with digital versions. People actually like to have a physical token of their achievements from an official source. Even the providers of MOOCs recognise this and offer people who complete an online course a fancy paper certificate.
This is a classic example of culture change and needs to be handled carefully. We discuss these factors in the demonstrator. Although the UK is one of the the most intensely digital economies in the word there are areas of life that are resistant to digital solutions due to their complexity – educational and health are two examples. When proposing digital certificates it makes sense to stress their benefits (speeding up job applications, on-boarding and generating digital CVs with certificates that have the same trust as paper qualifications). But we also need to be aware of the sensitivities around such a change and the potential for confusion from prospective users and misinformation from media and political commentators. The current education and qualification system does enjoy a large degree of trust from the public and that is symbolised in the paper certificates (a bit like paper money). Trust is a delicate commodity and once lost can be hard to regain. Another challenge in implementing digital certificates is the long term nature of the task – they have to last and be available for several decades to be useful.
The project team gathered at the SQA headquarters in Dalkeith outside Edinburgh just before Christmas. All the project partners were present plus SQA staff. A lot of the discussions from this workshop have found their way into the Demonstrator. You can find more about the workshop in the Meetings Log
What we were discussing in the project is pretty simple and basic – a secure place to store data between 2 organisations (SQA / APPII) and allow users to access their own data. But this is also complex…
Key system components : SQA <-> APPII <-> User (Learner)
Key elements of the system assessment certification and authentication
Tasks roughly for today – Identify process to make the vision work and begin to create the basis for Demonstrator, Model, Scenarios, Use cases, Personas and User Journeys / Stories etc. View the task as developing an overall generic mode for adoption of digital certificate.
My SQA as the basis of the data. The SCN as the unique identifier in the system – but the APPII system has to somehow resolve to that….? This would be the same for different awarding bodies.
