EBSI projects
University Alliances
Helping students, academics, and staff seamlessly access courses, workshops, and resources at partner universities across borders.
The vision
Una Europa, ERUA, and FilmEU are three major university alliances in Europe representing 50+ universities and 800k+ students from 15+ different countries.
Together, they are using EBSI to pioneer the future of education in Europe, contributing to the European Education Area (EEA) initiative by enabling the seamless verification of students' affiliations and educational credits and offering them easy access to programmes, courses, workshops, and resources across partner European universities.
Wallet Providers
Universities
Students
Countries
University Alliances
Participating countries:
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University alliances:
Universities: (Issuers of educational credentials)
Wallet providers:
Infrastructure:
The challenge
Moving between universities in Europe is challenging.
Today, students are looking to personalise their learning paths and build a diverse academic profile, which requires mobility and information exchange across institutions.
However, moving between both universities and their respective alliances currently involves time-consuming and costly administrative and verification processes. University Alliances aims to make this process as seamless as possible for a smoother learning experience. For this, collaborative efforts between institutions are needed to transform existing processes, with the end goal being a seamless cross-border learning experience for EU students with minimal administrative and verification costs.
The opportunity
Web3 has the potential to revolutionise cross-border education services.
This new student experience allows seamless verification of students' affiliations and credentials from a mobile device, without sharing personal data with third parties - with access to your phone, you always have access to all your credentials. The benefit is easy application for and access to programmes, courses, workshops, and resources across European borders and institutions.
A Web3 presentation and verification infrastructure for student affiliations brings together three main technologies:
- Digital Wallets: used by students and universities to receive, store, and send credentials on the move.
- Verifiable Credentials: for formatting, presenting, and exchanging credential data in a machine-friendly way.
- Blockchain: for delivering a highly secure, resilient, and decentralised way of verifying credential information.
The project
Building the foundations of a new digital educational services infrastructure using EBSI.
The project leverages the power of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) to build the foundations needed for a seamless cross-border learning experience, uniting three major university alliances in Europe to achieve this.
The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) allows University Alliances to design, build, and operate this next generation of services. The objective of this project is to enhance the student experience by allowing them to:
- Store, share, and present credentials of courses and learning achievements.
- Seamless verification and recognition of student credentials from universities, eliminating administrative processes.
- Enable secure selective discloure data sharing, offering full control over personal and educational information.
The scenario
Discover the scenarios.
1. Access to Erasmus Programme and MOOC (Una Europa Alliance).
Eva is a bachelor's student at KU Leuven (BE).
- KU Leuven 1 issues her an Educational ID and Una Europa Aliance ID which she 2 stores in her personal digital wallet.
- Eva then applies for an Erasmus programme at the University of Bologna (IT) by 3 presenting her Education ID and Una Europa Alliance ID.
- The University of Bologna 4 verifies the authenticity of her credentials against the EBSI ledger and accepts her application.
- At the University of Bologna, she is now 5 granted access to educational environments via her Education ID and Alliance ID.
- Post-Erasmus, Eva is 6 issued a Transcript of Records from the University of Bologna.
- Returning to KU Leuven, she 7 presents her transcript, which is then 8 verified against the EBSI ledger and integrated into her academic curricula.
- During her studies, Eva deepens her skillsets by attending a student-only massive open online course (MOOC) offered by Freie Universität Berlin (DE). She 9 presents her Education ID and Alliance ID for FU Berlin to 10 verify against the EBSI ledger and in turn easily 11 grant her access to the online resource.
- Once her degree is complete, KU Leuven 12 issues Eva a bachelor's degree verifiable credential which she 13 stores in her wallet.
2. Access to Joint Master Degree (FILMEU Alliance).
- Eva then goes to Lisbon and 14 presents her Education ID and Bachelor Degree credentials from KU Leuven as part of her application to the KinoEyes European Joint Master Degree (PT).
- After Kinoeyes 15 verifies her credentials and accepts her application, she is 16 issued a FILMEU Alliance ID by the institution which she 17 stores in her wallet. Eva can then 18 present the FILMEU Alliance ID to 19 gain access to educational resources.
- After finishing the master's programme, all three Higher Education Institutions part of the joint master's 20 issue Eva a Joint Master Degree diploma which she 21 stores in her wallet.
3. Access to a PhD and specific Workshop (ERUA Alliance).
Having received her master's degree, Eva enrols in a PhD programme at the University of Paris 8 (FR), a member of the ERUA Alliance.
- She is 22 issued an Education ID and an ERUA Alliance ID.
- As part of her PhD, Eva wants to attend a workshop at the University of the Aegean (GR), also part of the ERUA Alliance. By virtue of her Alliance and Education ID, she 23 presents her credentials to register for the workshop and is 24 issued a Workshop ticket ID which she 25 stores in her wallet.
- Upon 26 presentation, the university can 27 verify against the EBSI ledger the Workshop ticket ID, 28 granting her access to workshop materials.
- Thankfully, the ERUA Alliance has a partnership with a ferry company that allows her to 29 present her Education ID to be 30 issued ferry tickets with a special discount to and from the Greek university.
The project plan
Current implementation stage and plan.
Next steps
Mobilisation of the ecosystem is key to driving adoption.
Achieving this unified student experience demands a strategic and operational paradigm shift, mobilising a vast ecosystem involving legal entities, ministries, educational institutions, and students. The creation of a cohesive digital infrastructure for the University Alliances project necessitates common guidelines, including a new identification system and authentication service for seamless inter-university integration.
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