Sovereign data in our online world is now a matter of principle. It should also be a matter for the principal. Education, our cultivation of those who come after, is a business like any other. And, like any other business, EdTech has gleefully absorbed the data harvesting mantra of BigTech. Ostensibly for student welfare, but actually for greater profit. 

Their activities may undermine the purpose, but the truth is that better data management can make an outstanding difference in learning outcomes. Digitalization of education is a force for good. Portable cross-platform student-centric data they could take from platform to platform could unleash potential around the globe, breaking aspirants and teachers free from the manacles of proprietary education companies.

Elementary Failures

Schools struggle with EdTech vendor-lock the way developers struggle with software vendor-lock. Schools sign exclusivity deals with platforms like Pearson or Google Classroom, and all their students’ data is fed to their centralizing platforms. These platforms store everything in proprietary formats making it impossible to extract or use that data elsewhere. It’s data siloing 101 and it means it’s the companies, not the school or the students, who benefit from the data. 

The insights provided on their educational outcomes belong to the company, who lease it back to the schools. Schools can’t easily switch and, if they do, they lose their archival data. Students who move to schools with different EdTech platform providers find their learning process starting from scratch. This is especially acute in under-resourced districts where availability of platforms hinges on school board procurement cycles. Maybe that year history isn’t available, and all that progress is lost.

Student data is a mess. Schools hold their own, different EdTech platforms may hold different parcels of it. Even the government has its own set of data which is not merged with the wider educational apparatus. Students can’t even access a basic history of their own attainment that stretches back further than a year in most instances. Applying for a course is like assembling the infinity stones of pointless paperwork. 

The whole education system as we know it is an ungainly bureaucratic belly flop into a sea of sensitive yet vital data which ends up splashing over every corner of the pool and draining into multiple different service providers who then have the gall to sell it back to you. It’s surveillance capitalism from the crib to the classroom. 

Secondary Ambitions

Students have the right to take back control of their data and deserve pathways that help them assess and use that data on their own terms. We could build an educational system that revolves around student data first, app platforms second. Imagine this. You sign up for a platform and, without revealing any personal info to the other party, provide your real or automated teacher and complete history of your educational attainment and, more interestingly, your educational activities. DefraDB could enable this kind of student-controlled record-keeping, allowing encrypted, schema-consistent data to live on personal and professional devices, syncing only when needed.

What books you read in high school, your interests, hobbies, likes and dislikes, your learning style, your blindspots. With this holistic picture of who you are, teaching becomes a whole lot easier. A teacher can casually reference material they know their student already understands, or not rest their entire pedagogical approach on imagined interest in a topic they simply thought their student loved. As we see the rise of AI in education, giving these LLMs a blanket picture of who you are would dramatically increase their efficacy.

Of course, it’s all a bit personal. Most great education is, even as it strives not to be. This is where data embedded with protections becomes so powerful, as apps - in this case learning platforms - could read your “student data passport” and provide a service based on it without having access to the data itself. Or if using ZK-proofs, without even knowing what that data is. LensVM excels in transforming and translating data into the schema expected by any platform. A learning module from one system could operate seamlessly on the student records from another. 

The app could simply take what it needs to deliver a fantastic lesson. As it sits, EdTech requires students to surrender everything, and this forced extracting paradigm makes students (makes everyone) resentful, just like we all are with our personal data. Building sovereign data passports for individuals is not just about privacy, it’s about efficacy. 

Graduate Success

It’s also better for institutions. Distributed, tamper proof sovereign student records could hold proof of certificate, progress or attendance. That proof can be verified via purpose-built products that leverage DefraDB by any hiring company, graduate programme or online service without expensive recourse to off-chain bureaucracies. SourceHub’s trust layer means access to this proof can be tightly scoped and always logged. A graduate job application can verify credentials without exposing full history, for example. All of those different institutional databases could be unified into a single interoperable schema. 

We constantly state that sovereign data doesn’t mean less data access, it means more. Schools can share, students can share, and teachers can share - safe in the knowledge their privacy or their professional value isn’t being undermined as a result. Student results on one platform or on one programme can truly mean something in another. Think universal class credits - and a more direct path to universal education.

Source Network’s sovereign data tooling will be a generational change in very tangible real world systems. Education is yet another sector that has been corrupted by the server-client model. As we turn more and more to online education, AI-powered classrooms, and digital delivery of pedagogy, which we clearly are, then the toxic model for student data becomes ever more acute. We don’t need to spy on, suppress, and stunt educational and emotional growth in order to create better learning outcomes and, yes, profit from it. A sovereign data approach makes for portable, flexible and powerful education. Something we all want not just for ourselves, but for those who come after.