[C2VN]: Cardano blockchain courseware in Universities

Solution

Please describe your proposed solution

With close access to online/offline communities, universities we are seeing:

IT students are the core force in developing Blockchain applications in the near future, however, there are currently no official, open educational resources (OER), standardized teaching materials on Blockchain in the University.
Curriculum writing and approval are subject to the University's approval processes. It often takes time in some universities.
With ~55K IT students graduating yearly, The expected shortage of human resources in IT- in Vietnam, but students are equipped with limited blockchain knowledge, not meeting the human resource needs of Vietnam and the world.
Becoming a programmer on the Cardano blockchain platform can be a barrier for many developers because Cardano utilizes Haskell/Plutus, which are less common programming languages, and the community of participants is relatively limited compared to other languages. New languages like Aiken, Plu-ts, and Opshin have recently been released, so it takes time and guidance for the community to become familiar with them. Other foundation blockchain documents are scattered in many places in the English language.
There are other blockchain platforms such as NEAR, SOLANA, COSMOS that are investing in free programming teaching on their platforms to attract developers, but there is no mainstream courseware in Uni yet.

With the predicted shortage of human resources in the field of Information Technology in general, and specifically in blockchain, as well as the barriers to becoming a Cardano blockchain developer, we believe that a fresh approach is needed to attract developers from outside the Cardano ecosystem.

Problem-solving:

Project participants include a team of lecturers with many years of experience in teaching and writing specialized IT textbooks. Understand the process of creating and publishing textbooks in Universities to realize the publication of Blockchain textbooks and put them into practice.

The project team will collect open source coursewares (like CBCA, AIKEN, PPP and other sources), Standardize, organize the assessment of academic levels and bring them into formal teaching in universities.

On each chapter of the curriculum, the names of the authors, editors, and acknowledgments that this is the achievement of a project funded by Project Catalyst will be documented.

Being designed as official courses, students who are interested, especially promising developers, will be motivated to engage with the materials and source code despite the difficulties. Once students become familiar with the Cardano ecosystem, they will bring their creative ideas and products to this platform.

Impact

Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

With the foresee challenges and solutions, we believe that the project will be completely suitable for the challenge because:

Many students at the University have a desire to become proficient in programming on a blockchain platform. As the University does not currently offer a dedicated course, they often engage in free courses on platforms like NEAR, SOLANA, and BSC. This requires students to invest additional time and effort into learning without receiving recognition in their university profiles. Our courseware will become official material at the University. This will facilitate and encourage students' exploration and research. We believe this will be an excellent experience for students, incentivizing them and leading to increased adoption, productivity, and creativity.
Teaching this course at university and making them available as open educational resources (OER) for other institutions to reference, along with the Train the Trainer model, we anticipate a large number of students in the first cohort and subsequent cohorts will be attracted to join the Cardano ecosystem.
Designed as official courses, the curriculum will encompass both theoretical knowledge, practical exercises, and completion of assignments. This serves as both motivation and a challenge for students at the university, keeping them motivated to persevere through the documentation and code, regardless of the difficulty.

To measure the impact of the project, we considered these indicators:

Adoption and integration: The success will be measured by the number of universities that adopt the blockchain textbooks and integrate the courses into their curriculum.
Student enrollment: The success can also be assessed by the number of students enrolling in the blockchain courses.
Teaching documents: The teaching duration, recording/pictures, number of course materials, and quiz/test will also be used by us to measure the success of the project.
Promote CBCA course: As an essential part of the course, we will recommend and support students to attend and complete the Cardano Foundation's CBCA course with the goal of standardizing learning outcomes for students. We expect at least 100 students to achieve CBCA certification after the end of this project.

To share the outputs and results of our project, we have the following plans:

Project Reports (PoM and PoA):

We will submit a Statement of Milestones (SoM) which will be published, reviewed and approved by Community Reviewers. In each Milestone, we will public Proof of Achievement (PoA) to provide evidence that the milestone for which we have already been paid has been achieved.

Release evidences/results on our website

We will outputs/results on our website at C2VN and our github where interested individuals can access our update proactively. Discuss or query us any topics they prefer.

Share outputs/results to social platforms (Cardano Forum, Facebook, telegram, twitter, youtube and github):

These will be places we share updates, success stories, and best practices. These will allow us to reach a larger audience and gather feedback and suggestions from the community, fostering a collaborative approach to decentralized identity adoption

Capability & Feasibility

What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

The members of the project are the core team who organized the Community-Led Events Cardano Summit 2022 and Community-Led Events Cardano Summit 2023. We consist of technical experts from Cardano2vn.io and professors from 5 major universities.

(This is the picture of the Cardano summit CLE 2022)

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(and Cardano summit CLE 2023)

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We have been funded for 8 proposals (Fund6: 1, Fund7: 3, Fund8: 4) . All 8 projects have been successfully implemented, delivering impacts beyond expectations and marked as completed on IOG's tracking board . Here are some our activities we delivered for our community:

Organizing 8 webinars on web3 and building web3 on the Cardano blockchain

(this is picture of our class)

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Supporting students in conducting scientific research on blockchain, building, and integrating their applications with Cardano
Organizing and participating in “Together we learn Haskell”
Introduce and promote Blockchain and AI research and development to Universities

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We are collaborating with Gimbalabs to bring the Gimbalabs PPBL2023 course to Vietnamese in our native language.

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During the bear market, the project team regularly organized sharing sessions and networking events with universities, thereby collaborating with them to schedule both fundamental and advanced training. Below are some of the activities:

In 2024, representatives of 02 IT faculties of 02 universities wrote a outline for the course on blockchain and decentralized applications development.

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The people who wrote these documents are members of the project team. Although the outline is written in Vietnamese, I believe that readers will see our efforts and desire to bring the Blockchain curriculum into mainstream teaching in universities in Vietnam with the help of technology. online translation tool. These 2 original files can be downloaded from here

In the current landscape, universities are yet to have an official blockchain curriculum, and the project team consisting of esteemed professors from various universities collaborating to develop the curriculum, along with the potential financial support from Project Catalyst, achieving the above goals is entirely feasible.

Project Milestones

What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Milestone 1: The detailed breakdown of our project’s milestones and activities is avalable at this Google doc

MS1: First month

Milestone outputs:

Organization Conference to establish a scientific council :
Compiling a list of reference materials (books, documents, videos…)
Conduct internal discussions to collectively study the materials.
Setting standards of knowledge and skills for students who complete the course
Project management (planning, organizing, and controlling resources, tasks, and activities to achieve specific project goals)

Acceptance criteria:

The conference was held successfully with the expected members
There are detailed links/files, storage locations for reference materials (books, documents, videos…). All project team members have access to these materials
At the end of the seminar, you need to come up with a list of documents that will be used as reference to create a curriculum
The standards of knowledge and skills for students will be approved by the department/university
Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion:

Pictures/Recording of the conference
The implementation team will publish the reference materials index to the public
List of documents to use as reference to create the curriculum
Evidence of approval of standards of knowledge and skills for students
Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

Milestone 2: 2nd Month

Milestone outputs

Write a detailed outline of the syllabus
Assign each modules to team members
Creating textbooks/slides
Creating questions, exercises/labs
Reviewing the textbooks/slides/labs
Project management (planning, organizing, and controlling resources, tasks, and activities to achieve specific project goals)

Acceptance criteria

Outline of the syllabus has the consensus of project team members. Consistent with standards of knowledge and skills for students
It is necessary to assign tasks to ensure progress, with the right people in the right job.
Textbooks/slides are detailed versions with content consistent with the outline of the syllabus
Questions, exercises/labs are components that clarify content in textbooks/slides through question interaction and practice.
Find content that is not consistent with the outline of the syllabus and suggest correction options
Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion

A copy of the outline of the syllabus with the agreement of the project team will be posted to github
Tasks assignments will be shared with the community on github
A copy of textbooks/slides will be shared on github
A copy of questions, exercises/labs will be shared on github
Minutes of review meeting with findings and suggested modifications
Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

Milestone 3: 3rd to 4th month

Milestone outputs:

Updating the textbooks/slides/labs from review's findings
Organize a workshops to evaluate the textbooks/slides/labs
Update and submit the textbooks/slides/labs for approval from Universities
Promoting the course, open for enrollment at University
Project management (planning, organizing, and controlling resources, tasks, and activities to achieve specific project goals)

Acceptance criteria:

All findings are considered and corrected accordingly
Invite professors with appropriate expertise to attend and evaluate
Report the revised points and request approval from the department
Advertise new courses on the University/Club's website or social networks
Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion:

A copy of updated textbooks/slides will be shared on github
Workshop minutes include participants and comments
Reporting revised points with approval results will serve as evidence for the community
PoA will have links to the posts
Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

Final Milestone: 5th to 6th month

Milestone outputs:

Delivery course as subjects at the first University (funded by University)
Collect feedback from Students and teachers
Reviewing and update courseware after the 1st delivery
Public the courseware as a open educational resources (1st version)
Introduction to Cardano Academy and CBCA course
Project management and completion report and video submission

Acceptance criteria:

The subject will be taught in at least 2 classes in the university.
There are at least 3 reviews from 03 lecturers and 03 reviews from 03 students about the learning materials.
Organize to update the curriculum after receiving feedback from lecturers and learners.
The final update will be publicly available for other universities/institutes to refer to
The CBCA course and other Cardano Academy courses will be introduced in each course. Motivate students to complete and take the certification exam
Project management needs to indicate completed work, outstanding activities and upcoming plans.

Evidence of milestone completion:

Pictures taken in class can be accompanied by Recording
Reports of feedbacks will be shared on github
Summary of revised points in the learning materials
The learning material link will be announced in the PoA
Introductory images of CBCA, Cardano Academy in the classroom will be shared in the PoA report
Meeting minutes/Recording will be shared to the public

Resources

Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

Our core team member are:

Nguyen Van Hieu

Role: Project Manager, Product Owner, Blockchain Developer

Bio: Founder of HADA stake pool, member of Plutus Pioneer Program, and Lead Technical Support at many successful startups.

Hoang Van Thong

Role: Curriculum Quality Assurance Officer

Bio: Lecturer (since 2001) and Dean of Faculty of Information Technology (since 2020), University of Transportation and Communications, computer science experts, developed many websites

Fields research: fuzzy logic, soft computing, data mining, machine learning.
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Email: [email protected]
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Cao Thi Luyen,