School of Post Graduate Studies Faculty of Computing and Software Engineering Master of Science Degree in Computer Science

Abstract

An academic transcript is a document that details a student's academic achievements. It takes a lot of effort and time to create, validate, and disseminate the transcript. To mitigate these, Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been used to aid multilateral manual systems to transform into digital. Ethiopian public universities have already implemented an online student information management system across the country and are using it to generate academic transcripts. In its current state, the academic transcript system services face several issues and challenges, including insufficient service availability, ineffective delivery of services at a distance with discomforts, low performance, service collaboration and responsiveness, anywhere-anytime accessibility, information modifiability, and lack of tamperproof when students apply for job or education. These issues and challenges become critically serious in developing countries like Ethiopia. As a result, need to examine an alternative technology solution for these challenges. The prime objective of this research study is to examine the problem in the existing system of the academic transcript process and design an enhanced system model with Blockchain technology which makes it Immutable and shared record-keeping, reduces fraud, and speeds up the process. If the transcript is available in the blockchain, it can be seamlessly accessed by institutes /organizations in which the students apply for a degree or job within a day of request. The proposed research uses exploratory research design with constructive research methodology and a Mixed approach (semi-Quantitative and Qualitative) research approach for modeling the proposed blockchain-enabled academic transcript service system’s model. The data collection tools employed are document analysis, observation, and questionnaires. The sample size for judgment in this study was 82 closed_ended(survey), 48 open_ended (interviewed), document analysis, and technical observation considered. The acceptance test after evaluation and validation of the model and prototype found that 97% of participants agreed with disintermediated, 85.7% agreed with decentralized, 92.4% agreement with distributed, 94.2% agreed with cost-effectiveness, 88.6% agreed with time effectiveness and 94.3% agree with trustless. The study contributed an enhanced academic transcript service system’s model using the Ethereum blockchain platform.