Towards a Trusted and Unified Consortium-Blockchain-Based Data Sharing Infrastructure for Open Learning—TolFob Architecture and Implementation

Abstract

Open learning is now facing a complex higher education ecosystem that involves a variety of heterogeneous information systems and comprises decentralized stakeholders, such as universities, professors, students, and software vendors. Authentic, non-repudiable, and fast available data sharing among open learning information systems and stakeholders is a key issue that remains unresolved. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a consortium blockchain extended architecture featuring integration and cross-chain functions to provide a unified and trusted data-sharing infrastructure for open learning. The overall architecture consists of three elements: a blockchain-integrated open learning scenario schema; a blockchain-integrated open learning application model; and a pragmatic blockchain integration framework. The proposed blockchain integration framework is implemented based on Hyperledger Fabric 1.4. A trusted open-learning behavior and achievement management application is developed as a proof-of-concept which integrates two educational institutions’ four productional learning systems into a blockchain network and has stably run over six months. A suite of experiments is designed and executed to verify our blockchain system’s viability and scalability. The test result shows the implementation of the blockchain system is competent for the production environment and outperforms related works investigated. However, it does have limitations and optimization potential, which will be studied in the future.