Foundations of Bloxxgame
Academic research about teaching blockchain
We started teaching blockchain in 2016, when public discussions about blockchain were predominantly focused on Bitcoin. Academic publications at this time were either technical or centered around the legal and financial aspects of Bitcoin.
Our research on existing literature about teaching blockchain revealed that almost nothing was available at that time. To address this gap, we published a research paper in 2018, exploring what and how blockchain should be taught at a business school. The aim was to initiate an academic discussion on developing a blockchain curriculum for non-technical students. At that time, it was premature to create a definitive curriculum, as blockchain technology was still immature and not widely adopted. The main outcome of our research was a structured approach to developing a curriculum that considers the holistic nature of blockchain.
Four main questions were discussed in the paper:
- What are the key research topics in blockchain?
- What is the impact of blockchain and how do we define it?
- Which blockchain components are essential to understanding its mechanism?
- Which applications, beyond Bitcoin, should be discussed for their future significance?
At that time, the range of academic papers on blockchain was still relatively limited. You can find more details about this in our paper.
The result of our research, which was also based on practical experience and feedback from different learning groups, was the following structure for a curriculum:
Blockchain topic structure for teaching
Open questions about blockchain teaching in 2017
“The following questions about blockchain teaching could not be answered in this study and might deserve additional research:
- How can students become more involved in the sense of a self-activated learning experience? What would be an appropriate form for a “blockchain-lab” for business students?
- How can we design a teaching environment and mentally involve more faculty with diverse professional and scientific backgrounds as the motor for an ongoing learning community on this topic?
- What indicators can be used to define the relevant trends in blockchain to find a path between messing about and lagging?
We subsequently focused on the question of how students can be more involved in blockchain through a self-directed learning experience and what form a “blockchain lab” would be appropriate for business students. With the development of Bloxxgame, we aimed to provide both students and teachers with a tool for a self-activated learning experience. The reason for this decision was the belief that discussing the business implications of blockchain or developing business applications with blockchain requires a basic understanding of the principles of blockchain.
Read the following posts to find out how Bloxxgame was developed over a period of more than 7 years:
Playcoin
Bloxxgame 1
Source:
Dettling, W. (2018). How to Teach Blockchain in a Business School. In: Dornberger, R. (eds) Business Information Systems and Technology 4.0. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, vol 141. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74322-6_14 or https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323577685_How_to_Teach_Blockchain_in_a_Business_School