Classroom and other learning environment has always been the attention center for emerging tech. Today we hear about AI. Before, it was Big Data, mass social media, and STEM curriculums.

Education is a key industry for tech innovation

Because education produces an immense level of data. Inherently... And it has a structure. In social media and elsewhere, collected data requires a lot of work to organize. However, educational data is mostly organized from the start.

Also, education as a business model is second-to-none. Most of the time, the payments are upfront. Before the service or products are provided. This helps organizations plan ahead and weather the storms... And, payments are regular. Nothing comes close to this level lucrative market other than healthcare insurance and real estate financing.

Finally, education is a necessity. This was particularly true for k-12 level, but in last 5 years, we have seen a similar trend in workplace and lifelong learning. This trend is understandable because developed countries switched from hard industries to service economies in the last 2 decades. And, in a service economy, knowledge is the main raw material and production tool. So, education embraces a new role: supporting service economies most important ingredients - talent.

Web2-based education

When we put together these 3 pillars, it’s easy to understand why education is and will be as a top priority for tech. But here’s the question:

“If and how do tech platforms’ priorities align with learning?
If and how does data processing take place? Is it invasive or consented by all participants?” (Park, 2021)

For example, these platforms help learning persist during the pandemic but they also extended the surveillance on the intimate corners of people’ lives, and shaped the instruction and communication (Nichols & Garcia, 2022).

When considering platforms in education, we need to go beyond big tech because this industry has its own specialized giants. They operate in classroom management, school device monitoring, assessment, parent communication and curriculum support packages (Nichols & LeBlanc, 2020).

To give you more context, let me explain what I mean by '“a platform” in the educational context. A platform refers to two things:
(1) It is the hardware that apps are built on.
(2) It’s also digital spaces on which social and economic transaction take place (Nichols & LeBlanc, 2020).

Platforms work as stacks. Each layer of stack has its own social, economic, and technological dimensions. Understanding these stacks are critical. Then, we can uncover how their design and decisions effect the learning ecosystems.

Let’s work with an example.

An iPad is a platform that houses App store. And, the app store is another platform that holds apps. So, when a teacher brings in a cartoon making app inside the classroom, they also invite other platforms like the App store, and iPads. And, the priorities of these tools are not necessarily align with learning goals all the time.

Here are some examples what happens when platform and learning priorities (or you can say “incentives”) do not align:

• In Ohio district, teachers had to restructure their units because the software they relied on increased its fees.

• In a Texas elementary school, art teachers had to deal with a recent software update that removed some features they use in vocabulary studies.

• Seesaw, a parent communication platform, started to define the form and frequency of communication between parents and teachers. Teachers felt the pressure of increased communication in a Seesaw-friendly way.

• In other examples, teachers start to choose tools based on their compatibility to the platforms rather than their pedagogic value in the first place (Nichols & LeBlanc, 2020).

In summary, tech platforms’ design and development decisions directly affected teaching and learning. However, teachers and learners didn’t have a chance to take part in this decision-making processes.

Web3-native education

How do we address this issue?

In a more clear way, how do we create learning technologies that takes teachers’ and learners’ inputs into account when developing and designing products?

Well, web3 has a answer.
All of the topics mentioned above, namely data ownership, privacy, and governance are at the focus web3 ethos. They are fundamental for blockchain.

Hence, web3 offers unique data processing capacities (e.g. decentralized, encrypted, and smart). These capacities were not available before. So now, the floor is open for new experiments. DAOs are experimenting what it means to:

• build participatory communities,

• produce creative work

• take decisions as organizations.

We see examples in media, art and commerce. How about education?

Most of the current blockchain and education is about 3 broad categories:

1. Learning records; evaluation and assessment, verification, accreditation, certification

2. Administrative operations, such as hiring via smart contracts, continuing professional development, performance and payments.

3. Social contracts as in “learn-to-earn” framework in which learners receive crypto rewards for their learning progress (Capetillo et al., 2022; Park, 2021; Wolfson, 2021; Hernandez-de-Menendez et al., 2020).

However, web3 can offer more fundamental shifts (think of DeSci movement). And these shifts can affect the fundamentals of how we create educational technology, roles of teachers and learners and new organizational structures (less hierarchical) for educational institutions.

Since Education field is tied to many bureaucratic processes, it’s possible most of these new experiments will happen in non-traditional learning experiences. Online communities are good examples to observe innovation. In particular , learning DAOs try to create a web3-native education.

They question, experiment and create around topics like co-learning, co-ownership, and collaborative-governance.

Crypto Culture and Society (CCS) is a DAO focused on liberal arts education for crypto society. CCS allows learners to construct their classes together with instructors. They vote on how CCS DAO distributes its funding. In doing so, they invite stakeholders that are traditionally excluded from the decision-making process in education.

This initial step kickstarts a change in the power dynamics for the favor of traditionally excluded stakeholders. And, at the same time, it prompts these groups to gain literacies around these layers so they can make informed decisions.

Ed3 DAO is another community that solely focuses on how web3 is applied in education with emergent examples of teachers using NFTs, “learn to earn” models. From its DAO governance to work groups (“nodes”), Ed3 DAO tries new ways of collaborating and building education (D. Meyer & Saraf, 2022b; Patel, 2021; Vermaak, 2022).

In essence, learning DAOs look for alternatives to web2-based educational applications and they propose a potentially more equitable learning ecosystems (D. Meyer & Saraf, 2022a).

It’s time to build web3-native education by learning from these experiences. To do so, we will need to acquire blockchain literacies. So, we can make better decisions on how we learn, use and direct platforms in a way that’s aligned with learning priorities.

References

Acemoglu, D., Anderson, G., Beede, D., Buffington, C., Childress, E., Dinlersoz, E., Foster, L., Goldschlag, N., Haltiwanger, J., & Kroff, Z. (2022). Automation and the Workforce: A Firm-Level View from the 2019 Annual Business Survey.

Acemoglu, D., Autor, D., Hazell, J., & Restrepo, P. (2022). Artificial Intelligence and Jobs: Evidence from Online Vacancies. Journal of Labor Economics, 40(S1), S293–S340. https://doi.org/10.1086/718327

Cacioli, L. (2020). Exclusive: Access, Connectivity and Inclusion—How UNICEF Leverages Blockchain to Close the Digital Divide. https://blockchain.news/interview/exclusive-access-connectivity-and-inclusion-unicef-leverages-blockchain-close-digital-divide

Capetillo, A., Camacho, D., & Alanis, M. (2022). Blockchained education: Challenging the long-standing model of academic institutions. International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM), 16(2), 791–802. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12008-022-00886-1

D. Meyer, S., & Saraf, V. (2022a). DAO.edu—The Future of Decentralized Learning. https://ed3.mirror.xyz/VJUCPEMKKvh5Fyh6Gb1_YEZrl2FCAP6jgmsByuCCkmA

D. Meyer, S., & Saraf, V. (2022b). From Web3 to Ed3—Reimagining Education in a Decentralized Worl…. https://ed3.mirror.xyz/0U3QG8-4K6CD_ltU6SJyKN3-uBD3x6nEFs-YeShzYmk

Gillespie, T. (2021). : Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media. Yale University Press. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/9780300261431/custodians-of-the-internet

Hernandez-de-Menendez, M., Escobar Díaz, C., & Morales-Menendez, R. (2020).Technologies for the future of learning: State of the art. International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing (IJIDeM), 14(2), 683–695. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12008-019-00640-0

Nichols, T. P., & Garcia, A. (2022). Platform Studies in Education. Harvard Educational Review, 92(2), 209–230. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-92.2.209

Nichols, T. P., & LeBlanc, R. J. (2020). Beyond Apps: Digital Literacies in a Platform Society. The Reading Teacher, 74(1), 103–109. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1926Nichols, T. P., Smith, A., Bulfin, S., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2021). Critical Literacy, Digital Platforms, and Datafication. In The Handbook of Critical Literacies (pp. 345–353). Routledge.

Park, J. (2021). Promises and challenges of Blockchain in education. Smart Learning Environments, 8(1), 33. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-021-00179-2

Patel, B. (2021). Building Liberal Arts for Crypto. https://society.mirror.xyz/sfgXhqtwwMkhHLnAM1jVr16MdSJ4RGSb1Y6CAKpslgc

Reynolds, C. (2021). Announcing: World Bank Web3 Community of Practice. https://www.learningeconomy.io/post/lef-and-the-world-bank-announce-the-blockchain-for-education-community-of-practice

Vermaak, W. (2022). A Deep Dive Into OdysseyDAO | CoinMarketCap. CoinMarketCap Alexandria. https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/deep-dive-into-odysseydao Voshmgir, S. (2020). Token Economy: How the Web3 reinvents the Internet. Token Kitchen.

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