NOTA: a novel online teaching and assessment scheme using Blockchain for emergency cases

Technology advancements promote a redefinition of traditional instructional methodologies, as well as the roles of teachers and learners towards an efficient e-learning ecosystem. To date, all existing solutions are combined with the conventional face-to-face learning process. However, the latter can be unexpectedly hindered in some emergency cases, like the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. To handle such unexpected scenarios, this paper presents NOTA, a novel online teaching and assessment scheme that takes advantage of Blockchain technology to maintain the expected teaching quality and assessment fairness while respecting the courses' and examinations' schedule. Besides, NOTA also motivates both learners and teachers to persist in their endeavours, even from home, through Blockchain's incentive strategies. The preliminary results taken during the CoronaVirus period showed a very high satisfaction ratio, exceeding the 90%. This made us feel very optimistic about the potential of our proposal when deployed at a larger scale.