Toward a Secure Educational Metaverse: A Tale of Blockchain Design for Educational Environments

In the era of social distancing, distance learning represents a crucial educational challenge. Several 2D information technologies have been provided, yet these share multiple limitations and have negative social, educational, and psychological implications for learners. Metaverse promises to revolutionize education as we know it: this is a persistent, virtual, three-dimensional environment that is supposed to address most of the limitations of 2D information technologies. Nonetheless, there are still software engineering challenges to face to enable such a metaverse, especially when turning to software security and privacy. In this paper, we aim at performing the first steps toward an improved understanding of the security perspective of educational metaverse, by analyzing how blockchain can be employed within educational environments and how applications may be designed. Our ultimate goal is to provide insights into how blockchain can be further tailored in the context of educational metaverse. We conduct a systematic literature review, which targets 20 primary studies. The key findings of the study showcase the use of blockchain in 3 educational tasks, other than describing the blockchain design approaches, which protocol they commonly use and the associated limitations. We conclude by developing a conceptualization of a blockchain-based educational metaverse.