Top of Mind with Tambellini Group
Top of Mind with Tambellini Group
Part 2: The Power and Benefits of Blockchain Technology in Higher Education
Blockchain technology (blockchain) has a growing influence on higher ed. An institution that is well on its way to becoming the first blockchain university and knows this better than any other is Maryville University. In part two of this Top of Mind episode, Dr. Feng Hou, chief digital evangelist for Maryville University and visionary leader and advocate for the adoption of blockchain, completely immerses listeners in its possibilities by giving them an inside scoop into his intuitions blockchain journey.
Hello, and welcome to the April episode of Tambellini Group's Top of Mind Podcast. I'm your host Liz Farrell. This month, we are continuing our conversation with Dr. Feng Hou, a national expert on blockchain technology in higher education. To recap, Dr. Hou serves as chief digital evangelist at Maryville University in St. Louis. In this role, he has led the implementation of a series of blockchain-based initiatives that have already yielded impressive results and tangible ROI to benefit Maryville, both in terms of increased efficiency and an improved experience for faculty, students, and alumni and their interactions with the university. Dr. Hou has already shared with us how blockchain technology has reduced the time and bureaucracy required for students and alumni to request and receive validated transcripts from Maryville, but are still more compelling examples of ways this institution has reaped the rewards of adopting blockchain. We begin part two of the series with a discussion of smart contracts. Can you explain what smart contracts are to the uninitiated in this world of blockchain?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's a fancy term, right? That they call it, but some people would say that it is neither smart or, a contract. But however, what smart contract really is, is just a self executable code. It's just a small piece of program. And, in this program, it will have a preset conditions. And, you know, for those of us who are a little bit familiar with the programming languages and then you set those conditions. And when those conditions are met and it will trigger off to the next step, whatever that the next step is. To give you one example that a smart contract may say that when we have, you know, later we can discuss in detail about the student leave of absence requests, right? And if a student first fill off a form and that the form is complete with the, you know, all of the required i nformation, and then that triggers a whole r eview a nd approval process. And there are multiple parties involved and then it's pre-identified and set in the smart contract. And then if all of the parties involved, they have a reviewed and approved, and then it triggers to have a process response back to the student to say this has been approved, right? So in that sense, it is not that different from a normal workflow to help automate that process. But however, what value this smart contract can add is then that number one, that obviously you can, you know, verify the whole process of making sure that it's tamperproof and that there's no kind of manipulation that has happened. And number two, that there's a unique feature, which is called a timestamp. And if you follow the timestamp and then with another feature, which is to provide transparency, so, you know exactly where the process is. So you follow the timestamp when each of the reviewer and approver they have received this request of where they are, and then they can also provide some kind of input back as a reviewing result. And either they need some further information from the student or, you know, they have approved and all that provided that kind of transparency and also the accountability. So for the students that this smart contract help automate that service, but in itself, it's also address a real kind of student service needs.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that's a great description, I think, because leads itself very well into, um, the, how these are used, like the student payment plan. And I, I always think of too, like, it's like when you're buying a house, you've gotta get that original title. You think of all the documents, everyone who goes through it is just like, they're just so glad it's done and they have to run around. And I've heard a lot about the potential for this in, in real estate, in expediting things, all these, these original documents that have to be verified, if you can automate that. And everyone just knows, okay, this is here. And it triggers the next thing. As you say, they're automated. Tell us about the semester payment plan. You know, what the situation was, lay the groundwork for the problem and how the smart contracts help with that. Because this is another, I think amazing benefit to students. Financing education is such a pain point in all the paperwork, even after you figured that all out and how you're gonna afford it, it's still such a hurdle. So,
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And then, and also two quick things I wanted just to add here. One is that remember that this is our kind of like a north star trying to make student lives outside of a classroom as easy as possible. Right. Right. We talked about a five-second on demand transcript, eventually that transcript into nothing. So it doesn't have to be a theme that students is say, oh, I have to do this. And because they know now that they can just get right over there readily five seconds and the same kind of thing apply to here. Then, when we first started this journey, we went to the student services area. We went to work with the finance, work with the academic area and trying to identify what are some of the really the business processes that would have the most kind of a pain point. Right. And it takes a long time to do so. Student semester payment plan was one of them and it involves multiple party. It is a financial plan involves money. And then so use to be, weeks, if not a longer process, and then have to work with the student, you know, in person or manually to process those things and are the major issues that have been identified. And also given that particularly when students, if they have any kind of a delinquent account, they all university and money or they may have some other issues that would create certain kind of holes, and then iit can really, provide some create some kind of challenges for students one day need to get some official record from such as a transcript.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just if I can interject there, I mean, and that's something like, when you say a hold, like, what we're talking about there is, there is a very real situation at a lot of institutions where they're held hostage until they can figure out, you know, resolve some payment thing. And that may be like, you can't register for courses. You can't do other things. Those are the things, those are the pain points we know where students leave and they give up and they feel like an institution doesn't care.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. And of course, that's pretty, you know, of course, as part of the you know, what we are talking about the blockchain university, and there is a kind of a more, you know, global or, you know, more strategic goals that we are also trying to achieve, which is trying to make really higher education, more accessible, more affordable and more equitable. And, if we can help students and particularly if the student cannot afford to make all the payments, and then how about we help them to create a, a payment plan. And they're actually a national studies showing that, you know, to offer that the student payment plan as an option help, also, increase the student retention, because exactly what you said, that if there's a whole student cannot register for new courses. And then, so in this case that the Maryville does offer that, you know, payment plan. And, it's just that, it was time consuming. And then with this particular smart contract solution, then we identify some of the key, you know, steps. And this is again working with the student finance, the student services group, and, uh, for them to help identify first of all, you know, business process, map and what are the steps that's needed, and also identify what are some of the key kind of interaction points that the human touchpoints that would be required an d s t ill, and so then automate the rest of it and, t o help students to really m a king this as easy for them as possible. And then with a r elatively smaller amount o f payment to begin with, and then to help them then to lift those, y ou know, financial re lated h o sts i m mediately. ASAP.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And again, like, this is something, another happy story here. If we're talking those tangible benefits of numbers in ROI 66% ROI, because in net profit net profit made on this, not just like, oh, we've spent all this money and we've broken even like this has saved the institution money. I mean, you're talking about retention, which is everyone's biggest thing. The idea that blockchain can help with retention, I think is just so far conceptually from people understand it. And that, that's a reason why I was really compelled to have you share this example. Um, and you're the first institution to successfully have used smart contracts to automate and transform these student services too, which is very cool. Um, and so let's talk about the there's another side at the institution, which we know often gets frustrated, and that can be faculty and administrators and other people who have a lot of bureaucracy to deal with on their own when it comes to their employment contracts, adjuncts. And so there's some great uses. And another one where your institution is a first, which is the smart contracts for faculty. Can you talk about like the volume, I mean, I was just shocked at the volume of contracts that you have to deal with. We know institutions are having a lot more adjunct faculty, I guess. I just hadn't thought about from a logistics standpoint. Well, how many part-time or contract employees do you have? Like what are you doing on that side with smart contracts and what, what has been the faculty reaction to that?
Speaker 2:Oh, this is another story that I'm mostly proud that, you know, that I have helped to implement. It is a smart contract to automate the faculty and the adjunct faculty contract issue in the management process. And as a matter of fact, that just, a few months ago, Maryville University, president Dr. Lombardi, and held a meeting and with the group of key leaders in talking about this, you know, the impact, and then used to be a couple times, at least in a year when the academic offices, including the provost office Dean's office. And they're just rush trying to get all these contract out, right. I mean, and making sure that they have confirmed t he contract coming in and they have to k ind of track them down t hen t he chase after, and making sure that, you know, t hose a djunct faculty got a chance to review the contract and then a pprove it, cosign i t, and then send back either as a PDF o r format via email or hand delivered. And so you can just imagine that process. And, this is not just a process that's is not unique at Maryville University for sure. And the entire higher education is doing that. It is just then that I'm so grateful that our academic area took this issue to say, if we can apply a blockchain, smart contract solution to then help automated, and then that. So the impact, if I may, actually I will get into the details of that. The impact is that in the Maryville president of Dr. Lombardi's own words, then this from, it used to be a whole office, multiple offices, an got tied up for, you know, several days, if not weeks, the process literally into nothing into nothing. And today, if you go to visit the Maryville's, you know, we started from one school from the business of school and then immediately and the college of arts and the sciences and the, you know, jumped in to say we wanted, and then by now that every Maryville schools and the colleges is using this solution right now, because they improve the accountability right. 100% and the certainly improve the speed the time it w ould take a s I mentioned in our case study i n a n R OI and, a v erage that w i thin the first 24 hours, over 62% of those faculty, adjunct faculty w o uld ha ve a lready returned th at t h eir c osigned approved the contract. And then, an d o f course we have our own process and how long this is goi ng to ta ke by the end. And then we have a v e ry little less than 1% of the contract would get expired, meaning that the re c ipient never responded. And, b ut we automatically sen d ou t the re minders and the n th e ge tting close to the end and of fer 100% accountability. So our administrators know exactly, y o u know, how many and who have res pond on it. A nd this is also very important because all of the data that will be re a dy to report later for either the aud it pu rposes or fo r accreditation purpose and then it also hel p im prove the contact management solution. And, you know, in the past, maybe each school or college may have their own kind of maintain their own contact list that they may still do that. But however, and all of the context now they can have are on the blockchain and they can maintain those records and safely and securely. And, as for the impact, right, we talked about the tangible and the intangible. And, I have heard back from so many faculty members that they literally just saying, this is the best solution they have ever used software solution because many adjunct faculties that they're struggling, juggling between different jobs and lives, right. And, anything that can help them again save their precious time. And because by this, they already know, and they review an event, they just click on accept. And then, a n email meeting a r espond t o say, okay, thank you for, you know, accepting this is your, co-sign the document, that's it, turning i t into literally a two-click solution. And so I'm very proud of that a nd because o ur academic service e rror area and, you know, have identified this pa rticular,, y o u k now, ma nual p rocess and f o r us to d e velop this use ca se. An d, and of course we can get into the RO I. So t his is one case actually, y ou know, y ou know, we, w e already based on al l the numbers and, y o u know, we already kind of ac h ieved the RO I wi thin the first year. So, t h at's very significant.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, and just, again, highlighting some of the really cool, significant things here that stood out to me were the faculty response. Um, we know another barrier usually with, with new technology is well getting people to use it, because they're so stuck in their old ways, but it's just, you make it so easy that there's not thing where they have to understand the backend, that blockchain is a ledger and everything else. It's just more, Hey, this is awesome. Like how often does that happen when you try to make a sea-change in process, um, ROI too, of 101%, um, this is something where there was again, a net profit it on it, um, which is really, really, really cool. Um, so with those in mind, before we get to, I wanna, I wanna go back to, you know, it's, it's not all rainbows and sunshine when it comes to what you need in place to make this happen, but let's talk a little bit what's next for Maryville, because then we get to of this, this third leg of the stool on NFTs and tokenizing. And again, I think it would probably be helpful because as you said, you know, we both know NFTs are talked about a lot, but people's understanding of them if, if you can level set on that and then go into more specifically what Maryville has in mind for, for tokenizing and where you're at on those.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Certainly as I mentioned that on a roadmap that we created the three kind of stages to achieve this blockchain university vision that the Maryville president has set. So we have c ompleted our stage one and we a re on our way to a chieve our stage two goals. And, j ust simply because there w ere just so many business processes and c ertainly we will continue working on as many and as fast as we can. And again, this is not about j ust to something that we can brag about the blockchain. This is really aimed at h ow can we improve our student e x perience and how can we improve the institutional efficiency and then helping cut down the cost. And, s ome matter fa ct t hat Maryville also has set a goal to reduce the student tuition by 20% and within the next couple of years. And so you know, this can help us, you know, to make our job more efficient and to better, you know, serve our student needs. So in that guard than that, you know, we a re c ontinuing building thesmart contract to automate those business processes. And as for thetage three tokenize t he education, and this is a really, u h, the, the real value of, u h, o f blockchain that if we can help transform education, right. And t hat there are movements to c reate to modularize learning, to create t he microcredentialing. And there a re also demand from the, u h, employers about t he skills b ased training and, u h, so on a nd so forth. And t he t okens can, represent, u h, anything, certainly a c lass unit learning unit. And then to help l ater, based on s ome standard framework, to create t hat stackable kind of c redentials and then to help students c reate a smart pathway, u h, to achieve their academic successes. And so it can also help break the learning unit down into smaller pieces. It kind of smaller, bite-sized, so to speak, right. And then so, uh, to help those adult learners and the lifelong learners. And so they are, you know, juggling with their jobs and the lives. And, we want the learning to be, you know, really beneficial to them, but it doesn't have to take a significant amount of time or financial commitment. And then, so Maryville has been really, this is not the my work, but however is done some great work in building, this partnership with the industry said uh, you know, with national, regional, local different organizations to help build that kind of a workforce development. And, are also working with them, trying to see how we can, you know, tokenize those trainings as well. So these are, uh, the work that, uh, we are currently doing, but, uh, as you mentioned that it's not all rainbows, right. And there are, uh, definitely valuable lessons that, uh, uh, we have learned. And, uh, uh, one of the lessons that to me personally is then that, uh, you, we really want to make sure that this is the student services and the customer service needs driven, right? That's the, actually the first criteria I listed that's because the lesson, and don't promote the blockchains for blockchain sake. Right, right. That, you know, the business of leaders that they really have to buy-in and they're driving it and blockchain technology just happens to be the right tool. And, another thing that I, I learned also is that d o not k ind of impose or, y ou kn ow, insist that it has to be blockchain, right. There ma y b e o ther, y ou know, solutions that the university is currently using. But however, th e go al, the north st ar i s not about what technology we, we would use, but go al i s really how we can really dramatically improve student services an d t h e c hange student experience for,
Speaker 1:Yeah. You had said to me, blockchain technology can't turn a bad idea into a good one. And I think that's true for so many applications of technology. You can't fix a problem with the magical, easy button. You have to change the people and processes behind it. Otherwise, you know, we'll often be just the point to quite frankly, when it doesn't realize the value that it does in an ideal situation with perfect fidelity of implementation. Um, on that note, you had share with me the seven selection criteria you've mentioned, like don't use blockchain for the sake of technology, um, and in the community of stakeholders and soliciting their participation. Um, you have this other thing though, and this is where I think a lot of people get tripped up no matter what they're trying to do when they're modernizing optimize business processes first with a clear governance structure, that is where it gets really tricky. Can you talk a more about this, cuz we had also just, just to lay the groundwork a little bit more, um, when I talked with you about this, I was saying, do you need these, you know, modern cloud based infrastructure across the whole institution for this, even to be a possibility. And I was surprised when you said no. So can you talk about how you get to that optimization of business processes and clear data governance, even when you don't have that? Like you had talked about being able to, you know, working with, for instance, Ellucian and banner and other providers of these big, you know, whether it's student systems, student information systems or E R P um, that it's possible. So can you tell us a bit more about the prerequisite there and, and why it is possible without having as, as your president says, you know, having perfect be the enemy of good?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And the, um, actually the seven criteria was a few years ago when I was just about to transitioning from CNM to Maryville University and then University Business magazine approached me to say, you know, they were published an article about me and then asked me to write something. And then I said I just like to share what I have learned, right? So I put together a seven criteria for selecting the right blockchain project or initiative. And then you just mentioned a few and it is really very, very important that this is the customer service needs driven and not technology. And also it is also very important as I mentioned earlier that making sure that we optimize the business processes and that these are the things that we can do. And that's what the Maryville University we are doing. And then we gather a group people together and trying to see what is, and then sometimes we even get a president involved to say, in order to improve student experience and then making this service much faster, do we really have to take this step? And then the president may say, yay or nay, right, and to say no, we don't need this step app. And then of course, sometimes we do get the legal review involved to take care of it. But however, again, here, I want to just cannot emphasize more enough about this is the, you know, university student services need to, you know, centric and customer service needs centric. So with regard to the governance structure, and this is also very interesting and I just want to clarify, to make sure that because a blockchain solution such as a smart contract, it runs on the block chain, and of course it can be a public chain, private chain, a hybrid, or a consortium that we can get into that kind of detail if necessary. But however, the point is that the, you know, the smart contract itself runs on the blockchain, and it really creates a situation as a matter of fact, that I've been asked about that question all the time, is that what is the governance and who actually own this you know, particularly process or smart contract, right? So today at Maryville and then for the student transcript, actually it's the student record office, they own that particular process. And then for the faculty contract, it's actually our academic service area owns that because people wants to define it have to be owned by IT or what kind of, and IT is critical for sure. And I don't want to, in a way diminish IT's significant role, but however, what I'm saying is that the blockchain technology creates this kind of a consistent and a reliable kind of, you know, operations. And then, so far our experience has been, it requires really very little, you know, support from IT, you know, for this smart contract applications or use cases that we have developed so far. And with regard to the, you know, the cloud structure and the ERP solutions, these are still very, very critical because those are the record holders, right? And, I just want to clarify here that the blockchain and should not any kind of a blockchain implementation and should never really make a copy of the student data and house it on some kind of a services, onsite server, either on blockchain or not. And particularly in those centralized database and needs to stay with the ERP solution because in this case is a blockchain solution only needs to get whatever is necessary, the data from those E RP solutions or S IS solutions to c reate that p articular, you know, verifiable document. And then that the document should not be retained or kept intact anywhere else. Right. Other words than, uh, in our implementation, either the faculty contract or student transcript. And, they're not distorted as a PDF document on t he blockchain or o ff t he blockchain, or i t's b eing stored securely in a distributed manner decentralized, so encrypted. So in other words t han even a hacker is able to hack into any system and to g et that piece of data, it would be even just like it's not like a phone c all, or it's just a letter F or a letter G or l etter O. And that really does not make any sense without having to b e able to go through that, y ou know, very secure kind of encryption process to get the document back and also relies on this hash link, which is a k ind o f a, u h, another, u h, way of protecting the privacy and the security of the data. So I just want to take some time to, t o, t o clarify that. And, u h,
Speaker 1:That's very important. I'm glad you did.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Because if any other solution to say, oh, a blockchain, we, uh, uh, grab this data from say EUC banner or colleague, and then create some kind of document either put it on the blockchain. That's never advisable because public blockchain or transactions are public. And then people may say, oh, we can store them off chain, but off the chain, if you stored it as long as a single document, as some solutions, say for example, uh, they may say, okay, you can download it and put it o n some m obile device or some other areas, but that document still stays i n t ech as one document and then opportunities f or the hackers to hack a nd to steal that k ind of document. So just w ant t o clarify that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's very important. I mean, I think one, some of the other things you mentioned here are ones we've already touched upon, but being value driven, you know, seeking a solution with security, privacy speed, and lower costs and being that, and also being value driven in terms of being mission based. Like, as you say, it all comes back to, what's gonna benefit the student, what's gonna benefit the faculty. What's going to benefit the mission within that. And you had also mentioned your institution have worked with a blockchain partner, you know, sometimes you, you've gotta go outside and learn from what's already been done instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. So you can leapfrog over some of those, those early steps. And those are great. So, um, you've made a very strong case for the benefits of blockchain and how the barriers to entry are actually lower than many may initially assume. So when you look beyond the institutions you've worked with and the ones who are excited about blockchain and forging had as early adopters, I had asked you this question, I was very interested in your answer to this cuz you had, I had asked how long do you think it will actually take for these applications to reach critical mass at colleges and universities? And I think your first answer had been, you can't give an exact timeline, right? So
Speaker 2:The, the, the, the one, yeah,
Speaker 1:But you, you had also talked about, and I'd love to hear you share this with our listeners about, you know, the patterns that adoption of any technology goes through. So can you tell them a little bit about that? I think that would be a great way for us to, to close out our conversation today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Certainly many of your audiences probably are familiar with Gartner's kind of this hype cycle and then how a new technology started moving off to hype and comes down to the drought and then eventually normalize and to be adopted. And I think that w e are going through a similar kind of, y ou know, pattern process like that. And,, you know, b ut however, the very encouraging u ses that as I mentioned earlier, that at the national level, organizations such as, NSF ACE and the Chamber of Commerce and then Blockchain Chamber of Commerce, all the other organizations are paying very much attention and also statewide. Right. A nd, you mention also that even just d uring this p ast t he s uper b owl game, how many commercials h ave played o ut? Those are very, very expensive commercials, right? It costs five, six million, if not more for just a 30-seconds commercial and they're adverting think it, you know, some of course are the cryptos or metaverse, those are all the powered by blockchain. And so that all helped bring up this kind of awareness. And, so for us, we can only hope—I can hope—that through the effort that we are making here at the Merriville University. And, I'm also very encouraged to see that the National Science Foundation's virtual meeting, there a re so many other u niversities and the industries and t ech s tartup companies and, ed t ech companies, right. They a re trying to transform education and b y l everaging, you know, blockchains and specifically smart contract. And then, the NFTs and the, you know, the D ows, t he d efined web3, and so forth. So, if I would have to give a guess, I think that as more and more universities and, you know, through even the effort of this interview hear that they're actually use cases being deployed and being used to help student and help, improving institutional efficiencies that there would be more education leaders interested, and that wanted to start, you know, implementing the blockchain solutions at their own institutions. If I were to give it a guess that I'm hopeful, then I think that within three—no more than five years—and you're gonna see, you know, a major kind of a takeoff of the blockchain solutions at higher education institutions
Speaker 1:That, which is, you know, it seems like such a short time in the grand scheme of things. You had also said, and I love this, that you're not showing them how the blockchain mechanism, like what, what a blockchain mechanism is in describing this as a digital ledger and getting down into like the, you know, the Garden of Eden the creation story of blockchain. You're just saying, this is what it does, and this is what we want it to do.
Speaker 2:Again, sorry.
Speaker 1:No, go ahead.
Speaker 2:And again, we talked about, say, for example, when we talk about a five second on-demand student transcript, right? I mean, that's not regardless of their blockchain or whatever, would want to help their students at the transcript faster and in a secure and a verifiable way. And then, the agile adjunct faculty contract we talked about, and then if any, I just can't imagine any institution education leaders would say, oh, we'd love to have those manual process. And then to spend the weeks, and instead of, this is, you know, automated and then provided that kind of a accountability. So, I'm pretty sure that the more and more u se cases w ill be built that will present c onvincing that t he r eal value of b lockchain solutions.
Speaker 1:It's very exciting. We are a lot of things where we look into the future and we think, oh my gosh, how, how bad is this going to be when we're talking about like the planet or global warming, this is something though that, that I'm so glad that you took the time to explain to us with all these really fascinating examples, because it's such a case for optimism and for how quickly things can change for the better when there are thoughtful people who are connecting an institution's mission with new technology innovation. So, um, I really, really appreciate your time today. And thank you so much for sharing your insights, your journey professionally and especially at Maryville with our listeners.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me and I really, really sincerely, wish that, you know, more educational leaders and certainly IT leaders get interested. And then, I want to thank you and for this great opportunity for me to discuss blockchain use cases at Maryville University. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Well, it's been a privilege and a pleasure. And with that, we'll conclude this month's episode of Tambellini's Top of Mind Podcast. So don't forget to check out all our other episodes, blogs, and resources at thetaminigroup.com.