BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES AND MICROSERVICES FOR OPEN LEARNING COMMUNITIES. A SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE PERSPECTIVE
BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGIES AND MICROSERVICES FOR OPEN LEARNING COMMUNITIES. A SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE PERSPECTIVE

Summary/Abstract: It is a well-known fact that innovative e-learning concepts have pushed IT technologies to new levels of development or, reciprocally, innovative or even disrupting technologies have opened new possibilities for e-learning. There are many examples of IT technologies that contributed to new or improved learning paradigms and styles, such as social networks, mobile devices, augmented and virtual reality, MOOCs and distributed computing. Recently, several research works discuss how the blockchain concepts and technologies can be applied not only in cryptocurrency, but also on elearning and educational processes with an essential impact, e.g. de-centralization of resources, open learning, tokenization of e-learning, authenticity and security of information and resources. The current research paper will address how blockchain can be utilized with microservice based architectures, based on similarities, to support the most modern trends in education, such as open learning communities. In the first part of the paper, the main concepts and mechanisms behind the blockchain technologies are reviewed and explained in comparison with concepts and characteristics of microservices, considered a similar architectural pattern. Blockchain relies on the existing algorithms (such as cryptography) and distributed computing to bring new concepts such as ledgers and smart contracts. Likewise, microservices have roots on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Application Programming Interfaces (API). Microservices represent a new arhitectural pattern, to change the traditional way of software development resulting in "application monoliths" to a true modularization by means of composition of standalone software components (microservices), having well-defined functionality, securely exposed to other microservices or applications. In the second part, a software architecture leveraging blockchain smart contract and microservices to support open learning communities, unique identity, secure storage and retrieval of resources will be proposed and described.

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