Transcript of the Interview on the Construction of the Blockchain-based Student Identity Management System (BSIMS) Model in Higher Education Personal Learning Environments

This research introduces the Blockchain-based Student Identity Management System (BSIMS), a novel conceptual framework designed to mitigate issues such as trust deficits, data privacy violations, and the lack of interoperability prevalent in current identity management systems. BSIMS is tailored to augment the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) in higher education, offering secure, dependable, transparent, and efficient services for identity verification and data management. The model's development was guided by semi-structured interviews with seven experienced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) experts from both higher education and the corporate sector, focusing on personal privacy protection challenges within the PLE. The thematic analysis of these interviews revealed key challenges including data security, control, circulation, trust, user needs and experience, and system performance and scalability. These insights informed the BSIMS model, comprising modules like PLE participants, the PLE platform, identity authentication, blockchain verification, shared learning content, blockchain technology, and an Learning Record Store (LRS) verification system. These modules are characterized by autonomy, security, flexibility, and efficiency. The study elaborates on the functionality and interplay of these components, acknowledging the BSIMS model's limitations and suggesting future research directions. The significance of this study lies in employing blockchain technology to forge an autonomous, secure, flexible, and efficient identity management mechanism within higher education's PLE. The innovative aspect of this approach lies in the application of blockchain technology to the identity verification process of the PLE platform, and the introduction of a feature within the model to record user behavior using blockchain. It enhances personal privacy protection on the PLE platform, demonstrates the immense potential of blockchain in the field of education, and also gives us a whole new vision for the future of educational methods.