Very forward looking. It can solve the authentication problem that is souring MOOCs.

Pros:

- we can build our own knowledge and curriculum standar. it's a collaborative learning without frontiers

- the teachers or masters can have his own "office" where they can grown up at the same time his pupils. Like a master and disciple.

-Woolf University can open a big door to new reasearchers and senior researchers to develop proyect directly with privates and investors.

Cons:

- The higher education and his "mecenas" can see in this a dangerous way to give good PG certificates or Master's degree without a central control that it means that regular education (Universities and Institutes) coldn't recognized that certificates.

- the teachers who are teaching in this kind of university could be the new "guilds" or "lodges" of knowledge.

I think getting this innovation accredited would help to build buy-in.

Best regards,

Debra

Here are some Pro:s and Con:s, (and I also associate parts to own research)

PRO:s:

- It can use the power of ICTs, or more specifically AIs to automatize the university administration, and focus on the personal qualities in human communication. Instead of the idea to industrialize teaching with recorded lectures...

- It can leave all the ageing and misleading "distance-", "e-", "online-" ...learning terms behind, and just concentrate on teaching and learning communication again, in being "agnostic" to geography, choice of technology etc (if interested, see my critical data collection "Learning alphabet" below)

- It seems fully compatible with uses of learning analytics, adaptive learning and similar recent ICTs to help the teacher to understand how to help, understand and correct the student. (See my and coauthors recent paper below: "Blended learning; the new normal...)

- It realizes that lectures is not the prime things that scholars can do. Personal mentoring, feedback on student work and critical discussions are more central.

- It fits well with a time-based blended learning concept, such as the one I and co-authors have been trying to formulate (see below: A time based blended learning model).

- It can be criticised for connection to old exclusive classic education when a few gentlemen students just met at scholars quarters for discussions. Good I am sure - but scaleable to the masses?

- How is quality control handled in these one-to-one situations?

- Does this concept really need any blockchain tech, other than for keeping exam records secure?

CONs:

- Long way to implementation and recognition of such a concept. It is disruptive and this will create problems with present structures for a long time.

- The concept would gain from unbundling education even more: To separate examination from the teaching. But this means administration?

-I can see it working for a) mainly text-/content-based courses, b) for mature students that really want to learn and not just spend som social years on campus and get a degree on the way, c) for experienced scholars/teachers with good communication qualities, interested in student learning. But, when this is said - we have a lot in present higher ed that does not fit in in this cross-section.

- How are ed programmes constructed, courses established, exams defined? This makes some administration come back again, but could perhaps be dealt with? Not obvious how, though? Globally established standard courses, or just personally constructed?

- Is the power of social learning just dropped? Or is it reconstructed? It must be. also in adaptive learning, so this is a general question in future of education. (I have an old idea about this - see below and join me in speculation? ""Edu-Sync...")

Data The learning alphabet - claims about what?

Article Blended learning: the new normal and emerging technologies

Article A time based blended learning model

Research Proposal EduSync – presence as ”being interactable” in a synchronous ...

An article dealing with the issue:

Article BLOCKCHAIN IN EDUCATION: INTRODUCTION AND CRITICAL REVIEW OF...

It's astonishing how fast the topic is developing...

@Juliana: Thanks for the review. It will get readers quickly up to speed.

Woolf's "Blockchain University" is not the only such proposal, there is also Swiss ODEM SA, "Unlocking Higher Education". We will see many similar proposals. The idea of low cost distance education is hardly new. Blockchain is just a slight variation to the existing on-line model. http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2018/04/higher-education-using-blockchain.html

Hi! If something is new or not is dependent on categorizations we have. Of course this university idea is not new as a phenomenon online or as a concept of controlling cost in education.

For me, this blockchain component is not the most interesting issue either. I am personally interested of how ICTs are used for making priority for things that only humans can do. Here ICTs are not used mainly for time and place variations or for cost savings, but for concentrating of the relation between a teacher and a student. It is what the information philosopher Luciano Floridi calls "enveloping". (an envelope is the area within which an industrial robot is allowed to be successful - and humans are advised to not interfere, but control the work by an interface.) ICTs are in this concept used for letting humans concentrate on a task that ICTs are not good at (by automatizing things that ICTs can do as well, thereby refining the role of the human). Some other solutions try more to automatize the role of the teacher - this one aims at automatizing administration.

Is there an issue here about different universities having access to the expertise and funding to trial this innovation on a small scale?

Q1: Is there a problem here about different universities having access to the expertise?

A1: No. As a student anywhere in the world, you pay your money and you get your personal video hour each week for feedback on the previously set assignment.

Q2: Is there a possibility here for different universities to have access to Woolf University funding?

A2: No. Woolf University does not supply funding for other Universities.

However, Woolf University will award scholarships to bright students, and your top students could be eligible.

Woolf University is taking advantage of its academic location and position as first in the T.H.E. list to gain first-mover advantage.

They expect other universities to follow the lead. They are the 'experiment'.

Your students could however easily trial a course.

In more detail:

Woolf University will open up Colleges inside their virtual University.

The first College (Ambrose College) will be a clone of Oxford University, be run by far-seeing rebels from the physical college, but be a virtual University.

It will specialise in 1:1 video tutoring. Course material will have to initially be from good public sources.

Staffing of Ambrose College is primarily from Oxford PhDs, and is now closed.

Your University is 27th in the 2017 list of T.H.E., so you will be able to apply to be an academic of the second College, which I will call B. It is likely to be a clone of Cambridge University, but again be without the bricks and administrative costs through using blockchain.

Alternatively, your students in Scotland can become members of Ambrose and/or later on, B College. They will receive weekly video tuts on a 1 to 1 (or 2) basis each week. If the student defaults on virtual attendance and interaction, their tutor still gets paid tokens.

This leads to the thought that your University will want to accredit the course at Ambrose towards your University's degree. As Ambrose College is aimed to be the best blockchain college, this can easily happen theoretically, but the wheels of administration turn slowly!

If you believe that your tuition is the best in the Commonwealth, you can become a video tutor too.

In fact, College E or College Z could be a clone of your University, except for the lab work.

Following

Thanks Ian for an answer to Margaret's question where I see that you have dived deeply into the details of this new concept! I must as the person that posed the question try to keep up... Very appreciated!

And Margaret, thanks for your question! I see you are at University of Edinburgh? This with the Woolf University concept resonates for me with the very interesting, critical and innovative short document "Manifesto for teaching online" (version 2016 see https://onlineteachingmanifesto.wordpress.com/the-text/ ) which also deviates from the old mainstream routine understanding of what ICTs can contribute to teaching and learning (you know..."distance learning", "e-learning", "online learning", "blended learning"). ICTs are today normal, part of our lives which challenges us to understand teaching and learning in new ways. "First we shape our tools - then our tools shape us". (saying often attributed to McLuhan).

My original question was as follows: "Is there an issue here about different universities having access to the expertise and funding to trial this innovation on a small scale? " I had in mind the idea that staff at different universities might wish to emulate the innovative work at 'Wolfson'. I appreciate that in order to do so, they would require to have the correct training in techology and their own supply of funding from somewhere (not 'Wolfson') to pursue this work and ensure their learning technologists and academic staff are up to speed with technology. I must confess that when I listened to the video and briefly viewed the white paper, I sensed that relevant staff in some universities may need a little prior learning to fully appreciate the jargon, not to mention the implementation of the ideas.

@ Margaret MacDougall: There is no theoretical reason why e.g., Edinburgh University could not start its own blockchain university independent of Woolf University.

Your University would have to work in its area of expertise. Yes, it will have to hire expensive hard-to-find system designers and programmers, buy and house hardware etc.

Your University might advisedly delay the turn-on, in order to note the degree of success of Woolf University. Even today, Woolf University is keeping many options open.

There is no small scale, test-bed, sandbox or prototype. This is the real big bang thing! Thus the current need for startup funding / crowdsourcing.

However on a practical level, your University must not underestimate the great risks in starting up a virtual blockchain university. The founders of Woolf University are putting their talents, time and intellectual property into a new but exciting field. The key aspect is that after an initial injection of high risk "angel"/venture investor's Euros, a very large but fixed number of smart tokens are issued to receive student fees and give tokens to tutors with almost nothing being spent on administration in-between!

As I understand it, the new student uses Euros to buy tokens, pays the tutor in tokens and the tutor is immediately rewarded in tokens, which the tutor can either retain in the record to gain benefit from the tokens possibly becoming more valuable, or immediately convert them to Euros to buy some groceries for the house.

Students (and staff!) will presumably start by studying Woolf101 !

More important than understanding the terminology is understanding the risks involved. The difference to BitCoin appears to be that a WOOLF token's initial value is based on physical property / assets: The Intellectual Property and Explaining Skills of the tutors we trust to "deliver the goods".

Honestly, when I read the documentation about this new University, I was concerned about some of its features. I wonder why nobody has mentioned that. For example, bitcoins and blockchains have been used to run a parallel economy, in many cases engaging in illegal activities, such as gambling and others. One of the purposes is to avoid paying taxes. This university will be based in a tax haven. Is this right? Also, it seems like this new model is a kind of "supermarket university" in which administrative costs are cut down, but academics will be like "Uber drivers". In fact, this concept has been used to describe Woolf University.

@ Edgar Salgado Garcia : People do need to consider the second aspect of Ander's question, about negative aspect of Woolf University, and the posts have been one-sided.

Coins and cash can also be used for illegal activities. The same applies to Islands. That is no reason not to use them all for legitimate purposes.

They just require big bags for their physical transport to and from the Islands! So both illegal and legal operations are trying hard to reduce such uneconomic overhead costs through automation.

The Woolf University will have its own internal economy. This is not new. Some universities already ring-fence the money that is earned by a researcher to be subsequently spent entirely at that researcher's discretion but must be used for conferences, equipment, software and books (but not staff). Such funds do not pay interest. In theory however the temporarily inactive funds that have been accumulated could usefully be invested or even gambled on hi-risk adventures. Woolf University is merely extending this concept to their whole educational economy, and fully automating the current spreadsheets and accounting to reduce overhead costs.

To reduce tax, incoming and outgoing payments will be via an Island. Is this ethical? Well, is internal barter ethical? What about ring-fencing? Neither attract tax.

Uber drivers may not achieve rich returns, and similarly, Woolf tutors will have to see whether the returns are worthwhile for their part-time, home-based activity, involvement and expertise. When will the Uber car or the home computer have to be maintained or replaced?

Walmart is a mass marketing supermarket. The main White Paper states that Woolf is NOT trying to be such a one-size-fits-all supplier. On the contrary, it is specifically targeting itself rather to be a Savile Row custom tailor, which is a niche market, and Woolf's refreshing return to a complete customising approach is well supported by didactic considerations.

There are other things that one might be concerned about. Will it work? What if tax laws widen? What if there is no student uptake? Will it attract enough tutors? What if a tornado wipes out the Island?

Maybe this could help you : https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/oxford-academics-launch-worlds-first-blockchain-university

The blockchain is using in Higher Education in different ways, from the certification centred approach at MIT or Nicosia to a more related with flexible learning as in Oxford or Open University. At Barcelona, we are working in the use of Blockchain to manage personalised learning paths inside current courses. And of course, it has been suggested the use of Blockchain for open research.

If you read or know someone interested in a book in Spanish about Blockchain in Education, check at:

http://www.lmi.ub.edu/transmedia21/

Greetings

good discussion

excellent discussion-- the future is now

Nice Dear Antonio Bartolomé