Sony & Fujitsu to Test Blockchain for Educational Record Integrity

The education divisions of the Japanese conglomerate Sony and the IT equipment services company Fujitsu will test blockchain technology to improve the integrity of course records and grade data.

The pilot comes through a strategic partnership between Sony Global Education, Inc., Fujitsu Limited, the Fujitsu Research Institute and Human Academy Co., Ltd. Future foreign students partaking in the the the blockchain testing will finish a course called “Nihongo Dojo,” which will mentally prepare them to clear the Japanese language skills test Nihongo Kentei.

For the bilateral initiative, Fujitsu will offer enrolled students with its own digital learning tool, dubbed “Fisdom.” The IT giant will also offer blockchain cloud services to Sony Global Education, which will be utilized to verify and manage student achievement records and data. The press release states that the Nihongo Dojo course will also be taken via the online service of Fidsom before accepting students to study abroad:

“The course platform [Fisdom] will collect data including test scores, Japanese conversational ability, and study time, and store them on a blockchain as a certificate. Human Academy […] will be able to accurately grasp the language ability of individual students based on this highly reliable data, by comparing the certificate data on the blockchain with the educational certificates submitted by the prospective students.”

The press release says that enabling the authentication of language proficiency of students through the blockchain solution will permit Human Academy “to support them with appropriate education suited to their individual skill levels after coming to Japan.”

Fujitsu Research Institute plans to support the trial by assessing the needs of educational institutions and suggesting business models for deployment in future.

Fujitsu further says that it will:

“promote the utilization of blockchain throughout the educational field, and aims for a future society in which data associated with an individual’s learning can be utilized safely and securely beyond the framework of companies and educational institutions.”

The official statement by Fujitsu today proves earlier press coverage of the Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese news agency. The Malta government has recently announced a comparable pilot effort to use blockchain to counter the fraud of educational certificates.

In addition, the University of Bahrain confirmed this January that it would issue diplomas on the blockchain, and in the United States, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued digital blockchain certificates to more than 100 graduates in the autumn of 2017 as significant part of a pilot program.