BLOCKCHAIN-BASED CREDENTIALING IN ONLINE EDUCATION: ENHANCING TRUST, VERIFICATION, AND ACADEMIC TRANSPARENCY

Abstract

Online education increasingly relies on digital credentials, yet fragmented record systems can lead to verification delays, increase fraud risk, and limit portability across institutions. Although blockchain is often presented in current discussions as the primary remedy, this emphasis can leave unresolved how roles, standards, governance, privacy, and revocation jointly determine trust and academic transparency. Against this background, this paper proposes a practical conceptual framework for blockchain linked credential workflows. It clarifies issuer, holder, and verifier responsibilities across the credential lifecycle and specifies what constitutes verification completeness, including issuer legitimacy, credential integrity, and revocation status. To differentiate transparency from unnecessary exposure, the framework also introduces disclosure minimization, which elaborates privacy preserving verification and bounds what transparency should mean in this setting. Overall, the contribution is a standards aware design and evaluation model that avoids cryptocurrency framing and low level cryptographic detail, while situating adoption constraints as central to implementation choices. The model is intended for educational technology researchers and inst itutional registrars who are designing online credential verification workflows.