ASEP participated in the Twelfth International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning (eLmL 2020) that took place on November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020 in Valencia, Spain. Due to the Covid pandemic, ASEP participated virtually with a video, where ASEP’s Board Member, Foteini Bompoti, in the context of a special track organised by the […]
The Supreme Council for Personnel Selection (ASEP, Hellenic Parliament’s linked third party) organised a web meeting on November 20, 2020 with the Hellenic Blockchain Hub (H.B.H.), and NTUA in order to discuss the QualiChain project and explore the potential for further cooperation. H.B.H. is a non-profit network of executives from the public and private sector […]
On November 27 2020, representatives of the QualiChain project met with representatives of the H2020 projects DE4A and KRAKEN, with the objective to enable cross-fertilisation of ideas, share lessons-learnt and identify potential synergies that may arise. All 3 projects will provide, amongst others, decentralised solutions with the ability to share and verify individual qualifications while […]
The 12th International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning (eLmL 2020) took place online on November 21-25, 2020. eLmL is bringing together federated views on mobile learning, hybrid learning and online learning. The conference is dedicated to educators, eLearning experts, and students to exchange their ideas, experiences and lessons learned in different facets of modern learning. Alexander […]
The IEEE Engineering Day 2020 will take place on WebEx on November 27, between 2pm and 6pm (Portugal time, GMT). QualiChain will be represented by Professor Miguel Pupo Correia (INESC-ID, Portugal), who will deliver the special session: “Blockchain Cross-Borders: The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure”. Blockchain and distributed ledger technology are overcoming a period of exploration […]
The Open Education Global 2020 conference took place online on November 16-20. The Open Education Global conference is the most internationally diverse conference devoted exclusively to open education, attracting researchers, practitioners, policy makers, educators and students to discuss and explore how open education advances educational practices around the world. This year’s conference was held online, featuring […]
Rafael Belchior (INESC-ID, Portugal) participated in the PhD Open Days that took place on October 26-28, 2020 at Técnico Lisboa. This event offers a major opportunity for more than one thousand Ph.D. students to socialise and share their research with the rest of the academic community, companies, and alumni. The work presented by Rafael was […]
QualiChain aims to develop a technical solution that can solve various challenges and facilitate easier processes when it comes to education and the labour market. The QualiChain platform will be validated through 4 distinct pilot use cases, one of which will take place in the Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) School of the National Technical […]
The Twelfth International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning (eLmL 2020) will take place on November 21, 2020 to November 25, 2020 in Valencia, Spain as well as in a digital format to accommodate researchers and scientists during the Covid pandemic. Under the context of that conference, a special track has also been organised […]
The 13th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (iCERI 2020) aims to promote the cooperation and exchange of educational experiences among institutions all over the world and showcase the latest research activities around education. QualiChain, having participated in the conference in the previous year will leverage the stage of iCERI to showcase the […]
The 14th International Conference on Education, Curriculum, Instructional and Educational Technology (ICECIET 2020) took place on September 16-17 virtually. This is an annual conference that aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects of Education, Curriculum, Instructional and Educational Technology. […]
On October 8th 2020, the Secretary of Health and Civil Protection of the Regional Government of Madeira (SRS) met with the Human Resources Department and other congeners from Health Institutions under the SRS government tutelage to discuss the QualiChain platform latest developments. A representative from Knowledgebiz also joined the meeting to demonstrate the latest project […]
The consortium of the QualiChain project has met virtually on September 30 – October 1, 2020. Representatives from all project partners joined MS Teams to discuss the latest project developments and plan their next activities. The QualiChain project targets the creation, piloting and evaluation of a decentralised platform for storing, sharing and verifying education and […]
The 23rd International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL2020) took place online on September 23-25. This interdisciplinary conference is focused on the exchange of relevant trends and research results, as well as the presentation of practical experiences in Interactive Collaborative Learning and Engineering Pedagogy. Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) delivered a hands-on workshop entitled “Decentralising Education […]
QualiChain attended the virtual European Blockchain Convention on September 21-22. The European Blockchain Convention is the leading Blockchain Conference for Business in Europe, attracting tech leaders, regulators, investors, corporations, developers and entrepreneurs from the Blockchain industry. The mission of this event is to provide world-class content in collaboration with the brightest minds in the space, […]
Miguel Correia (INESC-ID, Portugal) is going to teach the second edition of a course on Blockchain and Smart Contracts, after the success of the first edition last year. A joint initiative of Técnico+ and Católica-Lisbon, with collaboration from INESC-ID, the course provides a 30-hour introduction to the topic. The first half of the course presents […]
Diogo Serranito, Andre Vasconcelos, Sergio Guerreiro and Miguel Correia (INESC-ID, Portugal) presented the QualiChain project and their paper Blockchain Ecosystem for Verifiable Qualifications at the 2nd Conference on Blockchain Research & Applications for Innovative Networks and Services (BRAINS 2020), which was held online on September 28-30, 2020. The authors discussed the ways that their proposal […]
Blockchain technology provides a decentralised peer-to-peer infrastructure, supporting openness, transparency, accountability, identity management and trust. As such, the Blockchain has the potential to revolutionise education in a number of ways. Blockchain technology offers opportunities to thoroughly rethink how we find educational content and training services online, how we register and pay for them, as well […]
The first virtual Summer Summit of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) took place on August 26-27, 2020. The event was a great success, with over 300 participants joining from 25 countries. The event’s theme was exploring Learning Technology in a time of crisis, care and complexity. Participants explored the themes of crisis, care and […]
On July 13th 2020, QualiChain was presented to the W3C Credentials Community Group by representatives from the Open University. John Domingue, Allan Third, Alexander Mikroyannidis, Niaz Chowdhury and Mano Ramachandran joined a conference call between all members of the W3C group and presented their latest work on Verifiable Credentials and Blockchains. In particular, Alexander Mikroyannidis […]
The first formal review of the QualiChain project took place on June 18th, 2020. The review was held online and was attended by representatives from all project partners, the Project Officer, two external reviewers, as well as DG CONNECT representatives. The review was a complete success, with the reviewers and the Project Officer commending the […]
On May 19, researchers from the Open University (OU) delivered a webinar about the world’s first digital application to certify COVID-19 immunity test results. The Open Blockchain team, led by Professor John Domingue, have developed a prototype mobile phone app that enables instant verification of tamper-proof coronavirus test results and vaccination certificates. Speaking about this […]
The 9th eSTEeM conference took place online on April 29-30, 2020. The conference is organised annually by the Open University, UK. Entitled “Informing Student Success – From Scholarship to Practice”, this year’s programme has been a mix of short orals, workshops and poster presentations, showcasing scholarship work conducted by STEM colleagues. Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open […]
The proceedings of the QualiChain Special Track on “Decentralised Qualifications on the Blockchain” have been published and are available online. Project partners have contributed 6 papers that describe the context and goals of the QualiChain pilots, the key research questions driving the evaluation of the pilots, as well as the overall framework of the project. […]
The consortium of the QualiChain project has met in Athens, Greece on February 19-20, 2020. Representatives from all project partners spent two days discussing the latest project developments and planning their next activities. The QualiChain project targets the creation, piloting and evaluation of a decentralised platform for storing, sharing and verifying education and employment qualifications. […]
UPDATE: This event has been cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) will be delivering a hands-on workshop at the 16th EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (JTELSS), which will take place on May 23-30, 2020 in Sani, Halkidiki, Greece. The summer school is a flagship event of the European […]
The Spanish web of blockchain industry Blockchain Economía recently interviewed Daniel Field, Head of Blockchain in Atos Spain and a member of the Atos Expert Community. Daniel joined Atos in 2007, working with innovation teams to accelerate adoption and guide development according to market needs. He has worked with academics, SMEs and large businesses across […]
The Technical Conference of RedIRIS, the Spanish network for the interconnectivity of universities and research centres, was hosted in Seville in May, 2019. QualiChain was presented by Andreia Inamorato representative of the Joint Research Centre for Education of the EC. A video recording of the presentation is available here (see 17.40 to 19.45 min, in […]
QualiChain representatives are among the leaders of a new group of academics, aDecentWeb, which aims to create a web where individuals and organisations remain in control. John Domingue and Allan Third (The Open University, UK) co-chaired the group’s first Decent(ralised) Web Symposium held in Vienna on January 17th, 2020. The focus of the event was […]
The Open Education Global Conference (OE Global 2019) took place in Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy on November 26-28. The OE Global conference is the most internationally diverse conference devoted exclusively to open education, attracting researchers, practitioners, policy makers, educators and students from more than 35 countries to discuss and explore how Open Education advances […]
The 18th International Conference on WWW/Internet (ICWI) took place on November 7-9 in Cagliari, Italy. This is an annual conference that aims to address the main issues of concern within WWW/Internet as well as the technological and non-technological developments in these domains. The 12th annual International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (iCERI) took place […]
The Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) of The Open University, UK celebrated on November 14 its 25th anniversary by organising the KMi Festival. The event showcased how Knowledge and Media technologies are impacting education, science and beyond. A variety of booths allowed visitors to talk in depth to different research teams and see demonstrations of the […]
Following scandals in the media such as with Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, there has been widespread concern around the abuse of personal online data. These include from Sir Tim Berners Lee who in a Variety article called the over centralisation of data on the Web ‘anti human’. At the annual EU Big Data Value Forum, […]
Early October saw John Domingue (The Open University, UK) participate in two panels in a Conference on Understanding the Post-truth Society held in Valletta, Malta. The aim of the event was to bring together technology experts, social scientists and journalists to discuss how recent challenges and issues associated with fake news, mass datafication, mass surveillance, […]
The Online, Open and Flexible Higher Education Conference (OOFHEC2019) took place on October 16-18 in Madrid, Spain. This is the flagship annual event of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU), Europe’s leading institutional association in online, open and flexible higher education. This year’s event was hosted by the National Distance Education University (UNED) […]
A new report has been published by the European Commission, presenting the projects that have received funding on the topic of “ICT-enabled Public Sector Innovation”. In the 2016-2017 period, 13 projects have received nearly €49 million EU funding via four calls for proposals and two research and innovation topics supporting ICT–based solutions for migration and […]
John Domingue (The Open University, UK) will be presenting QualiChain at the Digital Credentials Masterclass, which will be held in Bled, Slovenia on 24-25 October 2019. The Digital Credentials Masterclass is the culmination of a multi-year, multi-country project investigating the potential of micro-credentials to transform the European Higher Education landscape, from the perspectives of policy, […]
The consortium of the QualiChain project has met in Madrid, Spain on September 19-20, 2019. Representatives from all project partners spent two days discussing the latest project developments and planning their next activities. The QualiChain project targets the creation, piloting and evaluation of a decentralised platform for storing, sharing and verifying education and employment qualifications. […]
The Pan Commonwealth Forum (PCF), held at Murrayfield Stadium the home of Scottish rugby, brought together over 500 attendees from 61 commonwealth countries including many ministers and university vice chancellors to discuss the future of learning. The overall aim of this year’s event was to discuss, debate and showcase how innovations are improving the quality […]
UPDATE: This event has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. New dates: November 21-25, 2020. The QualiChain project is organising a special track at the 12th International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning (eLmL 2020), which will be held on March 22-26, 2020 November 21-25, 2020 in Valencia, Spain. This special track will […]
Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) joined the Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALTC) last week and delivered a QualiChain workshop. ALTC 2019 took place on 3-5 September 2019 in Edinburgh, UK with a packed programme and over 450 participants from across the globe. ALTC is an annual event aiming to confront and challenge established […]
Ingo Keck (TIB, Germany) will be presenting QualiChain with a talk at the De:Central Days convention, which will take place on September 24-25 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The De:central Days convention is a new industry-focused conference that covers all parts of the digital economy, with focus on emerging decentralised technologies like the Internet of […]
The Open University will be hosting TEDx on November 8th in Milton Keynes, UK. The theme of the event is ‘Imagine What’s Next’: Today’s world is always evolving. Amazing innovation, change and discovery takes place around the globe and beyond, right in front of our eyes. Huge leaps have been made in our lifetime – […]
The 9th Pan-Commonwealth Forum on Open Learning (PCF9) will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland at the historic BT Murrayfield Stadium on 9-12 September 2019. In keeping with tradition, the Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has partnered with The Open University to co-host the Forum and celebrate the 30 and 50 years of our respective commitment to quality […]
Date: Monday, September 2, 2019 – 13:00 to 13:45 GMT Location: Online via YouTube What is a Blockchain? What are the benefits and risks of Cryptocurrency? Why should we be reconsidering the perception of what our personal data actually is? Join Prof John Domingue (KMi, The Open University, UK) and Dr Robert Herian (Law School, […]
A number of hands-on QualiChain workshops will be delivered to renowned international conferences on open education and educational technology later this year. In particular, Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) will be delivering QualiChain workshops at: The Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALTC 2019), 3–5 September 2019, Edinburgh, UK. The Online, Open and Flexible Higher […]
In this QualiChain partner interview, we interview Sofia Mota, Director of the Digital Competencies Centre for the Portuguese Public Administration in the Administrative Modernization Agency (AMA), Portugal. Sofia has a degree in Computer Science and Business Management. In the last 20 years, she worked in IT consulting private companies, implementing and managing IT projects for several […]
We continue our series of QualiChain partner interviews with Carlos Agostinho, Director of Knowledgebiz, Portugal. Carlos holds a PhD in the area of industrial information systems by the Faculty of Science and Technology of the NOVA University of Lisbon (FCT/UNL) and a MSc in Computer Science from the same school. Having a large experience in […]
In this QualiChain partner interview, we talk to Foteini Bompoti currently serving as a Member of the Supreme Council for Civil Personnel Selection (ASEP), Greece. Foteini is an attorney-at-law with postgraduate studies in international trade and investment law and arbitration as well as maritime law and economics. She has over eight years of business, research […]
In this QualiChain partner interview, we talk to Ingo Keck, Web 3 Senior Scientist at TIB Leibniz Information Centre For Science And Technology, Germany. Dr. Ingo R. Keck is a physicist and holds the doctor europeus from the University of Granada. He worked as a researcher and lecturer in the fields of biomedical data analysis, machine […]
The 15th EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (JTELSS 2019) took place on June 1-8, 2019 in Bari, Italy. Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) represented QualiChain and delivered a workshop entitled “How the Blockchain can shape the future of education”. During this hands-on workshop, participants explored the different scenarios that place the learner […]
The Extended Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2019) took place on June 2-6 in Portoroz, Slovenia. QualiChain was represented by John Domingue and Allan Third from The Open University, UK, as well as Damien Graux from Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany. QualiChain was presented prominently at the opening and closing ceremonies as a conference sponsor and had a […]
The 7th International Big Data & Analytics Education Conference (EDCON), is taking place on June 3-4 in Maryland, USA. EDCON brings together experts from Big data and education to discuss novel solutions from the areas of Big data analytics, knowledge representation, Artificial Intelligence, and cognitive computing. In the context of the EU H2020 project QualiChain, […]
One of the key foundations of the QualiChain project is taking advantage of Blockchain ledgers as decentralised, permanent, unalterable stores of information that can help with the archiving and trust issues in education, as well as provide a frictionless method for transacting with others. Blockchain is at the forefront of research initiatives and projects all […]
We continue the series of QualiChain partner interviews with Simon Scerri, Senior Researcher in Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany. Simon leads the Big Data Management and Value Extraction competence area at Fraunhofer IAIS, which explores Linked Data applications to support Data Value Chains and realise various data infrastructures. In 2011, Simon received his Ph.D. from the Faculty […]
During the past few weeks, the QualiChain project has been featured in several prominent and high-profile events internationally. At the end of April, the Blockchain Expo took place at the Olympia Grand in London with over 8,000 participants. John Domingue (The Open University, UK) gave a Keynote on applying blockchains to lifelong learning. The event […]
The consortium of the QualiChain project has met in Lisbon, Portugal on May 9-10. This has been the first plenary face-to-face meeting of the project, after its kick-off meeting in January 2019. Representatives from all project partners spent two days discussing the latest project developments and planning their next activities. The next plenary face-to-face meeting […]
In this QualiChain partner interview, we talk to Pilar Pérez Berganza, Business consultant in Atos, Spain. Pilar graduated in Advertising and Public Relations (University of Barcelona, Spain) and is also certified in PBA® (Certified Professional Business Analysis) by the Project Management Institute PMI®. Pilar has more than ten years of work experience in R&D business […]
We continue our series of QualiChain partner interviews with Sérgio Luís Proença Duarte Guerreiro. Sérgio is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon (IST/UL), Portugal, acting in the Information Systems scientific area. He is also a researcher at the INESC-ID, IDSS (Information and […]
We start this series of interviews with Panagiotis Kokkinakos. Panagiotis is a Project Manager and Research Associate at the Decision Support Systems Laboratory (DSSLab) of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He holds a MSc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, an MBA in Techno-Economic Systems and a […]
Would you like to know more about the work and vision of the QualiChain project partners? In the coming weeks, we will be featuring a series of interviews from representatives of each project partner. In these interviews, our project partners will talk about their role in the project and how this relates to their background […]
Last week, John Domingue (The Open University, UK) was awarded a Fellowship of the British Blockchain Association. As stated on the British Blockchain Association website, an award of the Fellowship is “recognition of exceptional achievement and contribution to Blockchain research and allied disciplines”. Additionally, recognition through a Fellowship demonstrates a “commitment to excellence, leadership, advancing […]
Alexander Mikroyannidis (The Open University, UK) will be delivering a hands-on workshop at the 15th EATEL Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (JTELSS), which will take place on June 1-8, 2019 in Bari, Italy. The summer school is a flagship event of the European Association of Technology Enhanced Learning (EATEL). It provides a stimulating learning […]
John Domingue (The Open University, UK) is co-organising a workshop on Linked Data on the Web and its Relationship to Distributed Ledgers (LDOW/LDDL). The workshop will be held in the context of the Web Conference (WWW 2019). The Web Conference 2019 will be hosted in San Francisco, California, on May 13-17 to celebrate the 30th […]
The new H2020 project QualiChain has had its kick-off meeting on January 22-23, hosted by the coordinator partner NTUA in Athens, Greece. QualiChain targets the creation, piloting and evaluation of a decentralised platform for storing, sharing and verifying education and employment qualifications. The project focuses on the assessment of the potential of blockchain technology for disrupting the […]
This project has received funding from the
European Union's Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme under grant
agreement No 822404.
