DLT4All is an invaluable learning platform which fosters DLT skills in today’s fast changing world. Digital transformation is shaping the job market requiring new skill sets. To reap the benefits of these trends, education and training systems should respond better to these changing realities. High-quality education is essential to equip young people with the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and mind-sets they need to help them to seize the new opportunities ahead of them. As a relatively new area, blockchain technology is characterised by lack of proper educational material.
DLT4All tackled this issue and co-designed an educational programme and curricula in collaboration with all different stakeholders in the blockchain ecosystem.
The purpose behind the DLT4All project is to address effectively the lack of European entrepreneurs’ and SMEs’, students’, investors’ and incubator managers’ understanding of Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) and their applications.
While DLT and Blockchain can have significant economic and social impact, many European entrepreneurs, angel investors and incubator managers are still not aware of the potential benefits the adoption of these technologies can offer in terms of growth and innovation.
What are the thematic priorities in DTL4ALL?
This project equips European students, entrepreneurs, investors and incubator managers with the necessary skills and knowledge in the following eight thematic priorities:
- Peer-to-peer database design,
- Encryption techniques,
- Consensus mechanisms,
- Smart contracts,
- Digital signatures,
- Property rights,
- Blockchain-based decentralised applications,
- Distributed autonomous organisations.
DLT4All delivers a learning platform with these 8 dedicated related learning topics and supporting case studies, online/offline training programme, evaluation, MOOC-style training, etc. It also provides practical cases showing how blockchain and DLTs are being used in different industries. Aimed at all targeted audiences, this agile platform is open to all.
Q&As with DLT4ALL project coordinator Prof. Soulla Louca:
How did you come up with the idea for DLT4ALL?
By 2017, many European Higher Education Institutes had shown interest in blockchain. The problem they were faced with was the lack of organised material and real-world cases from the business, investor and start up worlds. It would have allowed people to understand and analyse state-of-the-art applications and blockchain-based technologies’ innovation potentials.
Searching the internet, one could find lots of material, but scattered and fragmented. This makes it very difficult to find an inclusive perspective of all the important aspects of the technology. Consequently, we decided to target European entrepreneurs, students, angel-investors and incubator managers in enabling them to understand and exploit Blockchain Technology and Decentralised Ledger Technologies (DLTs).
What was one of the most challenging moments of DLT4ALL?
As of February 2020, face-to-face meetings and events had to be re-evaluated due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Authorities in most European countries had enforced border shutdowns and lockdown measures. The main challenge for DLT4ALL was the rapidly accelerating nature of the field in all its aspects,with the risk that prepared content could quickly become obsolete. This meant that the scheduled events and training could not be delayed. Otherwise, much of the hard work and the resources invested would be in vain.
The consortium decided to deliver the training online throughout the period of 3 months. We delivered one module every week, ~15 hours/week, with a combination of invited speakers, live sessions that included questions and answers by the participants and the lecturers, virtual office hours, and more.
From your point of view, how is the project contributing to the beneficiaries' real-life and activities? Could you provide examples?
Academic partners
- Our students use it as supplementary material for their studies. Some of our Global Semesters students use the material to support their project.
- Faculty use some of the material in their courses.
- We organise other trainings such as the boot camp on Blockchain, NFTs and the Metaverse that took place in October 2022 at UNIC, partial material was used for the delivery of the content.
- The number of participants in the Moodle platform is increasing, reaching 610 by October 31 2022.
Other Partners
- DLT4ALL has allowed us to provide our ecosystem with a new training and service we did not offer before and has positioned us as experts in the blockchain field.
- In relation to the final target of our project, we were able to establish synergies with a H2020 project under the topic INNOSUP-03-2018 - Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies for SMEs and extended the training and expertise to the Blockpool project’s target audience.
And what was the most rewarding moment?
Looking at the final reports and our output, including the numerous workshops, and the hundreds of slides of state-of-the-art material produced.
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