An Initiative by Pistis to Establish Blockchain Learning Credentials

Blockchain is an ingenious invention that has received extraordinary adaption in the millennial age. It simply is a growing list of records known as blocks, which are linked by cryptography. Blockchain technology was often related to cryptocurrency in Bitcoin, which limited the possibilities of its adaption into any other field apart from the fintech or supply chain industry. Pistis, a revolutionary blockchain platform service, recognized the capability of blockchain and its benefits in other industries like education. Under the resourceful guidance of it founder Feng Hou, Pistis.io made it easy to provide digital credentials using blockchain technology whereby students gain access to a plethora of blockchain based services.

In appreciation of their incredible contribution, Pistis.io has been selected by GSV Venture Capitals as one of the global “Elite 200 Companies” and Feng Hou has been invited to present at the ASU/GSV Summit 2020. “As a revolutionary blockchain platform service that makes it EASY for everyone to use blockchain,” says the company’s CEO Feng Hou. “We are honored for the recognition. Learners of all ages from anywhere in the world can use Pistis.io today to build their lifelong learning profile on blockchain”, Hou, shares.

About Pistis

Currently serving as the Chief Digital Transformation Evangelist at Maryville University in St. Louis, Feng Hou co-founded Pistis.io with his wife Yu Peh in June 2019 in Albuquerque NM. Pistis.io is a global blockchain platform service that provides a true low barrier entrance for business and individual users to blockchain services. As an award-winning CIO, Feng Hou, Co-Founder and CEO of White Fish, LLC. has led the blockchain initiative to successfully implement a student owned digital certificate and degree diploma solution. Hou has been working on several blockchain use cases from creating a universal student ID, using smart contract to create a blockchain ERP solution, as well as building a stackable micro-credentialing solution to certify student soft skills.

Hou’s blockchain solutions implemented at Central New Mexico Community College (CNM) made CNM the first higher education institution in the nation to use blockchain technology to provide its students with digital credentials. while Central New Mexico Community College was indeed the the first institution in the nation to have implemented an institution wide learning credentials on blockchain, MIT was the first to issue degree diplomas on Blockcerts, but only for one graduate program. Similarly, Oral Roberts University (ORU) chose Pistis as their blockchain-based platform due to their ability to comprehend education, SIS/LMS systems, transcripts, JSON file conversions, and had the ability to meet the ‘fluidity’ criteria of ORU. Pistis was clearly the only vendor who had the depth and breadth of understanding that a Blockchain vendor needed to allow the university to have control over the digital credentialing process.

Now individual users as well as organizations can quickly issue Degree-Diplomas, achievement certificates, licenses, academic transcripts, etc on the blockchain using Pistis.io. Universities can issue to students at once using bulk issuance feature. Pistis.io provides individual users as well as organizations a free to use Certificate designing tool. Organizations / Universities can use this tool to create their bulk-issuance. They also provide free blockchain verification tool for anyone to verify a certificate issued on Pistis.io. Pistis.io allows users to import certificates from any other blockchain certificate issuance platforms. Users can also import JSON certificates based on MIT’s Open Standard for Certificates.
Pistis.io has launched its global Pistis Learner’s Record (PLR), says Feng Hou. “We believe that individual learners should own and control their learning credentialing data, and PLR will help them re-imagine learning with easy-to-issue, easy-to-share, and easy-to-verify digital credentials on blockchain.”

Pistis Learner’s Record is establishing a new blockchain learning credentialing standard and offers the following 10 guiding principles:

– Universal access for learners of all ages. Learners should have direct access to blockchain services with or without any association with an institution in order to issue, share, store, verify, manage and search their learning credentials on blockchain.

– Learners should have the ability to store all of their learning records in one easy-to-access and easy-to-verify online location no matter what document format the learning record is in and/or which blockchain (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) it was originally issued on.

– Learner’s records should include learning artifacts such as a piece of music, video clips and computer program codes other than just certificate-based documents because learning credentials are best evidenced in their original forms.

– Learners should have the ability to easily delete their accounts or hide their online profile to protect their online identity and privacy.
– Learners also can encrypt their personal and sensitive data online as an additional layer of data security.

– Access to learner’s records on blockchain should be easy. Learners should have the ability to access their own learning records via smart phones and web browsers on their computers.

– Learners should have the ability to issue their own learning records on blockchain for their learning achievements that they have made from both in and outside of the classrooms, including soft and power skills.
– Learners should have the ability to choose how they want to share and with whom they want to share their learning records.

– Learners should have multiple ways to share their learning records on blockchain including via email, social media, PDF, as well as traditional printed paper copies.

– Finally, all learner records should be saved and stored in a true distributed file system with hash links and encryption to protect data security.
PLR is fully compliant with the industry standard Self Sovereign Identity (SSI).

To know more about the new updated PLR please follow the link: https://pistis.io/blog/blog/pistis-learner-record

Everyone can register and the registered users, both individual and organizations, can easily design, test and issue certificates such as property deeds and learning credentials on blockchain. Pistis will develop new blockchain use cases to help both Individual and organization users create and grow their own businesses on Pistis blockchain platform.