Review Gold Open Access 2025

Exploring Governance for accreditation in the education sector using blockchain technology: a systematic literature review

Discover Education
Journal · Vol. 4 · Issue 1 · Art. 57
Abstract

The current education accreditation process poses a significant risk globally to the quality of education due to the increased falsification of academic certificates. Although previous studies have highlighted the potential benefits of blockchain technology in this context, there remains an opportunity towards a thorough investigation into the governance factors that influence the implementation of blockchain technology within the education sector. The accreditation system becomes increasingly important as a result of the emergence of a new learning ecosystem that enables the propagation of academic credits. It fosters an integrative learning approach by facilitating the accumulation of academic credits from a variety of higher education institutions, thereby promoting a learning ecosystem. The fundamental concept is to recognize the existence of a variety of learning pathways and to democratize educationTo this end, we conducted a comprehensive review of existing studies on the governance mechanisms for accreditation in the education sector using Blockchain technology. We identified 63 journal articles using four academic databases (EBScohost, Emerald, insight, Sage Journals, Scopus, Science direct) from 2018 to 2023. The literature appears devoid of proposals for a governance framework even though in the conventional paradigm such a framework is crucial in ensuring authenticity of credentials. © The Author(s) 2025.

Keywords

Author Keywords

Higher education Governance Blockchain Micro-credentialing Verification

Index Keywords

Author Affiliations
University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
Funding & Acknowledgements
University of Southern Queensland, USQ
The authors would like to acknowledge the University of Southern Queensland for financial support through the Australian Commonwealth Government Research Training Program Scholarship for PhD studies.
References 10 References
1 Achieving Sdg4 Through A Human Rights Based Approach to Education, (2018)
2 Son-Turan, Semen, Fostering Equality in Education: The Blockchain Business Model for Higher Education (BBM-HE), Sustainability (Switzerland), 14, 5, (2022)
3 Liu, Yue, A systematic literature review on blockchain governance, Journal of Systems and Software, 197, (2023)
4 Amirtharaj, S., A Systematic Approach for Assessment of Attainment in Outcome-based Education, Higher Education for the Future, 9, 1, pp. 8-29, (2022)
5 de Paor, Cathal, The contribution of professional accreditation to quality assurance in higher education, Quality in Higher Education, 22, 3, pp. 228-241, (2016)
6 Chapman, David W., Degrees of integrity: the threat of corruption in higher education, Studies in Higher Education, 41, 2, pp. 247-268, (2016)
7 IEEE Spectrum, (1977)
8 Sumithra, V., Decentralized Accreditation of Educational Attainments using Blockchain, 2021 6th International Conference for Convergence in Technology, I2CT 2021, (2021)
9 Fedorova, Elena P., Application of blockchain technology in higher education, European Journal of Contemporary Education, 9, 3, pp. 552-571, (2020)
10 Dewangan, Narendra Kumar, Enhanced privacy-preserving in student certificate management in blockchain and interplanetary file system, Multimedia Tools and Applications, 82, 8, pp. 12595-12614, (2023)
Quick Actions
Full Text via DOI
Citation Metrics
6
Times Cited (Scopus)

References 10
Document Identifiers