BLOCKCHAIN IN CONTINUING EDUCATION – TAXONOMY FOR A NEXT-GENERATION TEACHING PLATFORM

The constantly growing educational technology market and rising demand for comprehensive, lifelong learning in rapidly digitizing environments, offer significant potential for implementing decentralized blockchain systems in the context of continuing education. However, the continuing education sector underutilizes the promised value. This paper develops a multi-layer taxonomy based on a systematic literature review and expert interviews, which contributes to systematically delineating possible augmentations of continuing education management using blockchain-based technology. Applications include fraud prevention, intellectual property protection, efficient and secure data exchange by tokenizing personal documents and developing interoperable, smart educational institutions using smart contracts and IoT. The taxonomy incorporates descriptive knowledge and prescriptive guidance to researchers in educational technology, implementers, and instructors in continuing education, as well as institutional decision-makers on the benefits of blockchain, such as decentralized governance, data security, immutability, and anonymity, leveraged throughout the phases of educational program development in an institutional or company-internal context.