Blockchain Applications in Higher Education: A Systematic Literature Review

The widespread usage of the Internet and the abrupt outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic have compelled higher education institutes (HEIs) worldwide to shift their academic and administrative affairs online. These unprecedented changes have caused issues in relation to trust, identity authentication, and stakeholder engagement that cripple HEIs' effective digitalisation of educational practices. Additionally, the ecosystem of HEIs has become more complex because it involves various heterogeneous information systems and the diverse demands of decentralised stakeholders, such as lecturers, students, and alumni. To address these emerging problems, blockchain has become a potentially disruptive technology that can facilitate practical innovation and provide opportunities for the re-engineering of traditional HEIs. Therefore, the aim of this study is to consolidate the fragmented knowledge of blockchain applications in higher education based on the current literature of related research domains, blockchain benefits, and additional challenges for future studies. The paper consists of a systematic literature review following the PRISMA guidelines and an analysis of 79 peer-reviewed articles published between January 2018 and December 2022 by making an extensive literature search of Scopus, Taylor and Francis Online, and Web of Science databases. The results illustrate that blockchain is being explored and utilised to create new interventions to promote the sharing, securing, and management of data and knowledge and to enhance the coordination and trust between internal and external stakeholders of HEIs. This paper contributes to the stimulation of the awareness and interest of researchers and practitioners to leverage blockchain technology in their future work in order to facilitate the digital transformation of higher education.