Thanks to giant strides in technology, the past two decades have completely transformed how humans learn. However, the recent pandemic was an eye-opener for people and institutions who still believed in the ‘old-school’ way.
Today, most universities and institutions are learning that it is not enough to digitize the learning process only; it is equally crucial to modernize the certification, issuance, and storage operations for digital identities and their credentials. The world is going to witness migration from web2.0 to web3.0 very soon.
Universities, corporates, and learning institutions that have adopted online learning to face a unique problem today, i,e. – how to ensure the authenticity of their digital certifications in a world where Photoshop exists? Since soft copies of the certifications/badges they issue can easily be manipulated and have no system of verification – the credibility of such courses is under question.
Due to the fact that almost every database is now hackable, tampering with digital documents is now easier than ever. Thus, the safe storage and retrieval of online certifications is becoming essential. Though paper-based records are comparatively safe, circulating them is laborious, and they can easily be damaged or misplaced.
This is why learning institutions worldwide are looking for solutions that simplify the issuance, verification, and storage of digital certificates.
Many global institutions are looking at blockchain as a solution to the above issues, since it aids encrypted issuance, instant verification, and tamper-proof storage. However, in developing countries like India, most institutions do not have the awareness or access to such technologies, making the lives of millions of learners challenging.
This review will focus on TruScholar – a blockchain power digital issuance platform that helps educational institutions and corporates create verifiable certificates and badges with utmost ease and safety. TruScholar addresses the commonest concerns related to the designing, certification issuance, verification, and storage of digital credentials, helping both students and institutions in the process.
This review will focus on the following points:
- What is TruScholar?
- Key Features of TruScholar
- Our Final Verdict
So let’s begin, shall we?
What is TruScholar?
TruScholar is a cloud-based certification and issuance platform powered by blockchain that helps ed-techs, educational institutes, universities, and corporations create tamper-proof and secure digital certificates, badges, and credentials. The application allows users to create, issue and store verifiable digital certificates and badges that learners can use for a lifetime.
TruScholar comes with in-built editing tools and templates that help you create unique and customized certifications your own branding with and share them with learners. The platform helps you create and issue certificates in bulk while guaranteeing that each certification or badge issued can be verified in the future.
Moreover, each certificate produced by TruScholar is encrypted, time-stamped, and hashed into the blockchain before issuing them to learners, ensuring that it is available permanently to anyone, anywhere, and anytime.
TruScholar allows you to put your brand logos and signage into certificates and badges, and once issued, each learner gets notified via email. Once notified, pupils can easily log in to view their digital certificates, save them and share them on social platforms. Moreover, the authenticity of such digital certifications and badges can be verified instantly via the portal.
TruScholar is highly user-friendly and can be used by anyone from schools and universities to corporate and event management firms. It seamlessly integrates with third-party LMS and ERP platforms via APIs and features a dedicated ‘Credential Wallet’ for learners. The Credential Wallet allows learners to store all of their credentials safely and retrieve them as per their needs.
TruScholar allows institutes to download learners’ data in bulk and export it seamlessly for higher operational efficiency. Additionally, colleges and institutions can issue transcripts to their students directly through the application. Institutes can also add QR codes to their issuances through the TruScholar platform and revoke/reissue certificates in one click.
Impressed already? Let’s get to the key features yet!
Key Features of TruScholar
1. Inbuilt Certificate & Badges Designer:
Issuing certificates in bulk through third parties can be tricky for any institution, considering the huge margin for errors and the loss of brand value. This is why the TruScholar platform comes with an inbuilt tool for designing certificates and badges.
TruScholar simplifies the designing process and makes it faster by providing an extensive library of templates that can be customized as per your needs. Thus, you no longer need to chase third-party providers or designers for minor changes or make your students wait for weeks to receive their digital certifications.
Every learner today wants to have an opportunity to share their achievements on social media channels. However, this also provides an opportunity for institutions to boost their branding. Keeping the same in mind, TruScholar offers a Social Media Analytics Dashboard to understand how these social media shares affect your brand and how much awareness each share generates.
The analytics dashboard helps your institution figure out what can be improved and how you can capitalize on the latest trends. The dashboard promptly analyzes brand engagement to determine how and where these credentials are shared. Additionally, it helps you identify how much engagement is created through each media platform and which of them generates the most traffic using a ‘marketing barometer’ exclusive to the application.
3. Instant Verification with QR:
Verification of credentials is typically considered a time-consuming affair. However, with advancements in blockchain and digital security, the instant verification of digital credentials has now been made possible. TruScholar simplifies the process further by using QR codes in its certifications, which can be scanned instantly to check the credibility of documents and their contents.
TruScholar’s platform helps verifiers directly check the authenticity of documents without connecting with the university/institution directly.
Additionally, this helps students share their digital credentials remotely while having complete control over who each credential is being shared with.
4. Skills-In-Demand Analytics:
TruScholar allows institutions to analyze the skills that are in most demand among student communities and the top skills that employers are looking for via its Skills-in-demand dashboard. This dashboard helps institutions identify the most sought-after courses and design curriculums that would attract more learners.
TruScholar does extensive market research and analysis to find the most important and relevant skills from multiple industries. The recommendation library of 1000+ top skills allows you to stay ahead of the curve and address student needs for the future, which benefits your organization tremendously.
5. E-Credential Wallet:
Each learner in TruScholar is awarded a personal Credential Wallet where they can store their digital identifications, health records, and documents safely. Such documents can only be accessed by authorized individuals and cannot be tampered with. Students can access the wallet digitally from anywhere and share it whenever necessary.
The Credential Wallet from TruScholar follows international guidelines such as PDP and GDPR, ensuring privacy and security at all times. Anyone wanting to access such documents has to request permission from the wallet’s owner, and they have to provide a public key of the credential requested for authentication. Apart from storage, the credential wallet can also handle cryptographic keys and encryption/decryption of credentials.
6. Blockchain Technology:
TruScholar uses Blockchain’s Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Indy to create 100% secure credentials that can be verified over a lifetime. It creates a secure ecosystem for institutions and combines it with web and mobile technologies to create seamless user interactions for learners and institutes.
7. KYC with Digilocker Integration:
The KYC (verification) of learners is crucial to the onboarding process. TruScholar integrates with Digilocker, a Government of India security initiative, to ensure secure storage and rapid eKYC verification. This ensures higher productivity and makes the enrollment process much faster for institutes.
Apart from the above features, TruScholar offers you a dedicated account manager once you choose a plan. The account manager helps you in setting up the application as per your organization’s structure and assists you in adding courses, designing certificates and badges, course assignments, OTP verifications, etc.
Our Final Verdict
TruScholar offers a versatile and robust tech stack to institutions and assigns with the design, issuance, storage, and instant verification of digital certificates in a globally compliant manner. In addition, it allows institutes to use certificates in bulk and get audit-proof in seconds, much to the benefit of learners.
With TruScholar, learners and institutes in the Indian subcontinent now have a secure, customizable, shareable, and verifiable digital credential platform that transcends borders. This novel credential issuance application has several features that put it in a league of its own.
Considering its advancements and its lifetime availability and instant verifications, we are inclined to give TruScholar a full ‘Five-Stars’ in our review.
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