Event

We would like to inquire about your interest in a 2-day virtual meeting, “Blockchain in education – education in blockchain”, to be organized by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI), February 14-15, 2022, noon-4PM Eastern time. This meeting is not intended to make recommendations to NSF.

Time: You can choose to attend one or more of the following sessions. Feb 14, 2022 12:00 PM ET or Feb 15, 2022 12:00 PM ET

 We kindly ask you to follow the link below to register, note your interest in receiving future updates, and to provide us with voluntary information to help us prepare for the meeting:

To register: https://ida-org.zoomgov.com/meeting/register/vJItf-mpqj4qHytK6lk04X1apsjaVipy3Cg

The National Science Foundation supports creative, novel, and transformative research on new approaches to advancing formal and informal education, broadening participation, and strengthening qualified workforce development in all areas of STEM, including applications of new and rapidly evolving technology. The rapidly evolving blockchain technology offers numerous useful properties, including:

1. Removal of intermediaries: by allowing the users to interact directly with each other and with data through the use of smart contracts
2. Sovereignty and self-regulation: by promoting the community ownership, organization, voting, and development of forms of governance of projects
3. Immutability: with all records being permanent and impossible to modify
4. Transparency: where all transactions are open and visible, while confidentiality of data such as personal information is maintained
5. Promoting collaboration: with various collaborative forms enabled by blockchain tools
6. Trust and anonymity: blockchain design principles and distributed infrastructure provide confidence in its operations and resistance to malicious attacks while allowing user anonymity

The National Science Foundation expects that applications of blockchain technology in the areas of formal and informal education, broadening participation and qualified workforce development in all areas of STEM will bring forward novel, impactful, equitable, accessible and cost-effective solutions to facilitate secure, traceable, and verifiable exchange of educational data among various stakeholders and benefit the broadest possible range of users. The NSF also appreciates the need for improved teaching and learning about blockchain technology itself in formal and informal settings.

The meeting is designed to facilitate the discussion of experts from convergent fields of education, computer and information science, and other fields, together with industrial and government partners and university administrators, leading to the formulation of a short whitepaper containing major opportunities for:

1. Research, education, workforce development, and broadening participation efforts emerging from the overlap of the fields of computer and information science, and education, and
2. Ways to enhance teaching and learning about the design, development and use of blockchain technology

We expect to have a very small number of short introductory lectures and devote most time to discussion, focusing on the discussion in groups and report outs and discussion in plenary sessions.

 Details of the meeting are being coordinated and put together by NSF and STPI. We very much hope you may be interested in participation and receiving more information about the meeting!