Universities should offer bitcoin to students to increase engagement and add value

This is an opinion editorial by Rupert Matthews, lecturer at Nottingham Business School.

University education is expensive. Even within the UK, Stories of students leaving with £90,000 (approximately $115,000) debt is not uncommon, which calls into question the value that can be realized by a university degree when offsetting this considerable cost.

To help manage the scale of this expense, it is now common for students to obtain part-time, if not full-time, jobs, with recent data suggesting that this is the case. most students The same article in the UK also states that the time some students spend on university work is affected as a result of time devoted to paid employment.

As a university teacher, this situation causes me great personal distress, with students taking on debt to obtain a university education, which they do not devote enough time to or really benefit from, unable to develop the critical thinking skills that university graduates are valued for. This poses a dilemma for budding university students: whether their time and money is better spent on a university education, developing practical skills, or simply buying bitcoin, as suggested by Nick Hoffman of Bitcoin Magazine.

Recent years have seen further difficulties in university education. In addition to the cost of pursuing higher education, the COVID-19 pandemic has increasingly blurred the line between in-person and online education. presence and engagement have been around for a long time an issue in universities, and I can admit to having issues with those where it was beyond my constitution to go to a late night 9:00 lecture or stay for a second hour seminar. Add the new option of “catching up” with lecture recordings or extensive material online, and the allure of attending in person may wane even further.

Possible solutions for higher education

How to address this is becoming a serious issue for higher education, institutions are exploring options like earning “Digital Badge” to complete activities or attend sessions and progress test To link engagement from the first to the last grade in those modules across the course of the module. Each of these options, while having the potential to increase engagement, involves considerable cost to set up, and can then add additional duties on staff to manage and record results for each student. Unfortunately, keeping tasks simple enough to quickly manage and record them can make them monotonous, which may not result in really fostering the commitment they aim for.

The problem is even more pronounced on modules that require independent learning, such as the dissertation modules that can act as a cornerstone of university learning, where the module content relates to relatively-generic research skills, which are then applied and developed as the student completes a project of their own choice. Compared to more traditionally arranged modules, in which students gradually cover material for essays or exams at the end of a semester, students need to learn a lot at the outset, to be able to choose a relevant topic and plan and design a project, which, quite simply, cannot be left until a week before submission. While key propositions and step-by-step timelines can be introduced to ensure earlier engagement with the material, sometimes, they do not foster sufficient engagement, with student responses continuing to take the form of “I wish I had started earlier”.

An alternative way of promoting engagement on modules is to offer cash prizes for the best work. Unfortunately, given the difference between starting a project and receiving an award, students who have been well involved in the past will likely be involved in these projects as well, whether there is an award or not. Students who are generally less engaged find such rewards unattainable when compared with their peers, and therefore refuse to change their approach to work.

The question is then raised whether there could be some form of financial incentive, but one that is combined with promoting good practice at the start of the module. Some form of “treasure hunt”, which requires students to cover material available online as well as attend sessions in person to complete the challenge and win a prize. Fortunately, bitcoin fixes this.

engaging students quickly

The solution seems so simple now, I’m annoyed I didn’t see it earlier. But then again, isn’t that what many bitcoiners feel when they first think about being introduced to bitcoin?

The question is, what impact could embedding the bitcoin wallet seed phrase within the module content have on initial engagement in the module? The argument appears to be strong; By presenting the challenge at the start of the module, and then locating a 12- or 24-word seed phrase within specific material in the early parts of the module, engagement would theoretically be promoted. If students want a chance to open a wallet, they will have to attend specific sessions and review important material online.

Staging when particular material (with specific words) is available to students will reduce the risk of students scanning all the material on the first day, as well as providing the ability to catch up to slow starters, for example, if only “x” number of words were initially available. Compared to some forms of session engagement and progress testing, the cost associated with this approach is low, apart from the cost of embedding the seed phrase within the content and the cost of bitcoins.

By keeping the amount of information about the prize provided to students relatively small (covering the terms “price,” “Bitcoin wallet” and “seed phrase”), the impact on the material covered in the module is minimal. The potential advantage of this approach is that students will have to find out what these words refer to, if they have not already encountered them. approach too Is necessary Winners, and even those who complete the task but are unable to withdraw funds, must download a wallet, restore it with a seed phrase, and then complete the transaction by sending bitcoins to a wallet for which they control the private key. The eventual winner will not only know what bitcoin is, but must have demonstrated that they can use the technology.

A sneak peek at presenting ‘The B Word’

Compared to typical efforts to convince others of the value of bitcoin, whether by telling them about the problem bitcoin fixes (thanks, Austin Herbert) or identifying the people who can best spread the word (thanks, Héctor Alvero), “Pilling the Orange” would not be a direct objective of such a university program. Having said that, in a weird way, this approach will take advantage of the lecturer’s network, and can introduce the topic of bitcoin to anywhere from 50 to 500 students in a given module. Hopefully, students rely on the information they receive from their lecturers, with possible one-to-one follow-ups providing them with opportunities to ask questions and develop their understanding.

In bringing this bitcoin experiment back into the academic world, it is at least fair to acknowledge how it might relate to learning principles. well-established model proposed by John BriggsWhat is known as “creative alignment” suggests that it is not about the students or how the material is presented, but instead the work that the student does determines what they learn.

The purpose of embedding the bitcoin seed phrase in the course material is to promote student engagement with the material in the first place, so that they are able to create projects while leaving time to complete them. Indirect orange piling is when students become aware of bitcoin, learn how they interact with the network and, just maybe, begin their journey down the bitcoin rabbit hole.

If students want to win the prize, they must engage with the material, tracking seed words, starting each student at the same point, hopefully motivating them to engage enough to have a chance at winning the prize. Even those who don’t win prizes are expected to have put in more work than they would have done otherwise (positive for university education).

The pessimistic scenario would be when no one would engage in the treasure hunt, but as opposed to rewarding someone who would have acted anyway, this situation would at least mean that the bitcoin would remain in the original wallet. A final scenario that could be seen as a risk would be if a student falls deep down the rabbit hole and eventually neglects their research project. However, I might be hard pressed to find a bitcoiner who would see this as a completely negative consequence.

If bitcoin adoption is to reach a critical mass, orange piling up on a large scale is needed by people who haven’t yet understood bitcoin. The “numbers go up” (NGU) technique is undoubtedly a great marketing tool, which may explain my own students’ level of interest in “crypto” in 2021 that was non-existent in 2022, but NGU doesn’t encapsulate the richness of the topic. While embedding a seed phrase to promote student engagement earlier in a module is not an obvious, deliberate, enthusiastic or sentimental orange-peeling move, it does promote conversation and learning about the protocol for financial gain (winning the prize). As Tim Niemeyer wrote, learning about bitcoin should be the first step before considering whether or not to buy the asset.

From a teacher’s perspective, a secondary objective is to get students interested in and talking about the module. From a bitcoin user perspective, the aim is, if nothing else, that the next time someone mentions bitcoin, students will have personal experience that hasn’t been swayed by widespread media or news reports about the latest scam. From both points of view, it is a worthwhile activity to provide final year students with more knowledge about an important innovation such as bitcoin as they prepare to progress in the wider business world.

Providing this kind of informed opinion to newly hired graduates (tasked with incorporating new ideas and perspectives into established businesses) can help guide a business toward adopting bitcoin in its operations. A student may be able to say, “I once had a lecturer who kept 200,000 sats in his wallet for us to claim” when dollar-sat parity has been reached. Alternatively (and perhaps a bit more realistically), they could say, “I paid off my student loans with bitcoin, and I had my first meeting with a bitcoin-obsessed lecturer.”

I would be happy if they also say so.

This is a guest post by Rupert Matthews. The opinions expressed are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.