RMIT University Online announced on Aug 28, 2018, the launch of two new blockchain courses designed to educate students on how to develop blockchain infrastructure for their own businesses. The online university partnered with Stone and Chalk, Accenture and Flex Dapps to create the only Australian university-backed courses for blockchain technology. These courses are also a part of RMIT’s short course portfolio.
Blockchain Courses to Provide Comprehensive Overview of the Technology and Fill Skill Gap
RMIT University Online launched its first course, Developing Blockchain Strategy, in March with huge success as it sold out within 48 hours. The online university has seized on this success and are releasing two additional blockchain courses called Designing Blockchain Solutions, which will commence on Oct 8, 2018, and Developing Blockchain Applications, which will begin next year on Jan 21, 2019.
According to an announcement published by RMIT, these courses would provide students a strong comprehensive overview of blockchain technology. The overview will contain basic fundamentals like designing blockchain infrastructure and learning how to think strategically about applying blockchain solution to their businesses.
Helen Souness, CEO of RMIT University Online, expresses her excitement about the new courses:
We’re excited to be pioneering these courses with our expert partners at Accenture, Stone & Chalk and Flex Dapps in upskilling and inspiring professionals to explore real-life applications of blockchain technology within their businesses.”
These blockchain courses are a part of a list of industry-endorsed short courses and were designed to help bridge the skill gap among industry professionals and executives. The courses run for six weeks and are all credentialed by RMIT University.
The course Designing Blockchain Solutions will help a variety of people, including managers, entrepreneurs, consultants, software developers and technology enthusiasts, gain a greater understanding of distributed ledger technologies’ infrastructure on a technical level without needing to possess programming skills. The course will explore different blockchain platforms, including Ethereum, and some involved in the Hyperledger project like Sawtooth, Fabric and Composer.
In addition to these blockchain courses, RMIT has also partnered with a leading digital credential platform known as Credly. Credly provides students with digital credentials that are recorded on a blockchain network.
Use of Blockchain Technology to Increase Overtime
According to PwC’s Global Blockchain Survey 2018, in a group of 600 executives across 15 different countries, 84 percent noted that their organizations are actively involved with blockchain technology. While many are in the process of researching and developing the technology, many businesses are keen to explore blockchain to see how it could improve existing business operations.
Alan Tsen, General Manager at Stone and Chalk in Melbourne, is positive about blockchain:
“Over the next few years, I think we’ll see an explosion in the use of blockchain across everything from digital identities to voting and power trading. Increasingly, we’ll also start to see more POCs going from concept to production.”
Tsen added that Australia is currently facing a sizeable skill shortage of people with the right technical knowledge to operate blockchain networks. Having the ability to build decentralized technology will, therefore, be highly invaluable, especially as adoption and interest in blockchain technology continues to rise.
