BitDegree (Marketplace)

Online education is what we do. We took blockchain and used it to connect students with teachers and employers. We will help you start from zero by teaching skills that land you a job.

Online course completion rate is disappointingly low at 5%. Vilnius University researchers and BitDegree have joined forces to research a new way to tackle this problem.

We’re proud to announce that researchers from the Economics and Business Administration Faculty of Vilnius University (VU), one of the oldest universities in North-Eastern Europe, have shown a great interest in BitDegree’s new ideas for online learning and have entered into a joint research and development project that will explore new ways to motivate online learning through blockchain-based economic incentives and gamification elements. It will be the first research project in the world to assess the impacts of economic incentives with tangible monetary value on learning motivation of online students. In short — does paying to learn influence online learning success and most importantly, how?

BitDegree and Vilnius University partnership

“Research has shown that adding the elements of gamification, including incentives, into the learning process can increase students’ motivation and desire to complete a course. Competition and rewards for completed tasks increase students’ engagement and help them go deeper into the subject and farther in their learning journey. Together with the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Vilnius University, we’re aiming to identify the ways to leverage those elements to help the online course completion rates grow and to generate an even higher inflow of those using online education platforms,” says Ervinas Rimdeika, CEO and co-founder of BitDegree.

The first research investigating the link between economic incentives and online course completion rate

“Nobody has conducted research in this field before,” says VU professor Vytautas Dikčius. “It’s interesting from the scientific perspective, and it can effectively help turn the online education to be more successful and relevant to the job market. Economic incentives can ease the dilemma and show the way towards the right decision — to continue learning. In our research, we want to confirm this link and investigate the cases when we can expect positive outcomes.”

For this, nearly 800,000 EUR have been allocated to this project by the European Regional Development Fund under the program “Intellect. Common Scientific and Business Projects”. The total value is over 1.3 million Euro. Additional funds will be used to create even more valuable system in cooperation with experts from the best university in Lithuania. The joined effort will be based on consistent and scientifically valuable research. VU will isolate and run multiple pilots to identify the direction in this very broad field.

Validating BitDegree’s effort on a scientific level

This cooperation will blend into BitDegree’s overall aspiration to motivate more people to get their practical skills online fast, learning from the experts in their fields. We’ll actually investigate deeper the impact that our offered incentives make on students’ motivation to complete online courses. We’ve been testing our scholarship campaigns with companies from different fields, such as web hosting, management consulting, industrial control and automation, and we’ve got several upcoming campaigns including economic and employment incentives. We opened the window to an enlarging scope of research participants which will be used by scientists from VU in a well organized, scientifically valid way which will eventually bring more insights into this currently unexplored land.

VU research team will isolate their aims investigating the motivational impact made by economic incentives, by offered job opportunities, or both. BitDegree will craft the offers so that they can be used in such studies to get scientifically valuable results.

We’re proud and delighted that this cooperation will bring much more scientific weight and value in BitDegree’s plans and aspirations! In the next two years planned for this project, we’ll get stride by stride closer to clearer insights of how our ideas work in the real world, and to having more elaborated tools to tailor our motivation strategy for online learning.

BitDegree shooting upwards and onwards — always!

Online teaching is a challenge – but what about online learning?

The main issue teachers face when trying to move their lessons to the digital space is the fact that unlike in the traditional classroom, the educator no longer holds the power: it is hard to impose authority through a live stream or a video recording that can be closed with a single click. “In most cases, online teaching is not viable as a concept – however, online learning is. For it to work well, students first have to develop learning skills, such as self-regulation,” BitDegree’s co-founder and CEO Danielius Stasiulis explains.

To help the learners develop these skills and provide them with a better chance at effective lifelong learning, BitDegree and UT scientists are planning to build an open learner model (OLM), based on the principles of self-regulated learning (SRL). While educational theory defines SRL by cognition, metacognition, motivation, and emotion, there’s still a serious shortage of studies on the latter two factors – a gap that the project teams aim to tackle.

In the project’s final stages, BitDegree will use the results of the research to develop an online course builder that encapsulates the best instructional design practices. This way, educators around the world could easily adapt their material and teaching process for the digital space without losing its impact on students and add the benefits of accessibility, convenience, and advancement of their self-learning skills. The project was financed by the European Regional Development Fund, which has allocated 1,198,849.81 Eur in total to the project executors.

Combining the expertise of IT professionals and scientists

Founded in 2017, BitDegree is one of the most innovative EdTech startups in the world, recognized as the Global Champion of the Learning & Education category by the United Nations World Summit Awards (WSA) in March. According to BitDegree’s co-founder and CEO Danielius Stasiulis, “one of BitDegree’s objectives is to find a way to make online learning efficient and effective through empirical research and experimentation. We are delighted about this partnership with UT: it allows us to add a layer of fundamental research to our efforts and apply it in experiments in real-life settings.”

This isn’t the first time BitDegree takes part in academic research. In 2019, the startup teamed up with Vilnius University (VU) to analyze the impacts of economic incentives on online students' learning motivation. Now, it has joined forces with UT’s Center of Educational Technology – an international research center that has one of the leading research teams in this field in the Nordic-Baltic region.

“I find this project a promising opportunity to connect researchers and startup companies and develop something very innovative together. We know from our research that there’s a lack of tools that could systematically support online learning, specifically its different phases and areas of self-regulated learning. I hope we can design an OLM that could be applied in online courses all over the world to make them significantly more effective,” the head of UT’s Center of Educational Technology professor Margus Pedaste claims.

BitDegree is partnering with Vilnius University to research the impact of economic incentives on students’ motivation for online learning. In such way, company contribute to global scientific knowledge, and continue to implement the best practices on your platform. The project is partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the program “Intellect. Common Scientific and Business Projects”..

By partnering up with the Center of Educational Technology of the University of Tartu, BitDegree is researching and developing next-generation technologies for interactive online course creation. Having noticed traditional teaching principles do not work in the digital space, BitDegree aim to create the best tools for adapting educational materials for online learning. The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

BitDegree is partnering with Vilnius University to research the impact of economic incentives on students’ motivation for online learning. In such way, company contribute to global scientific knowledge, and continue to implement the best practices on your platform. The project is partially funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the program “Intellect. Common Scientific and Business Projects”..

By partnering up with the Center of Educational Technology of the University of Tartu, BitDegree is researching and developing next-generation technologies for interactive online course creation. Having noticed traditional teaching principles do not work in the digital space, BitDegree aim to create the best tools for adapting educational materials for online learning. The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund.

Online education is what we do. We took blockchain and used it to connect students with teachers and employers. We will help you start from zero by teaching skills that land you a job.

Online course completion rate is disappointingly low at 5%. Vilnius University researchers and BitDegree have joined forces to research a new way to tackle this problem.

We’re proud to announce that researchers from the Economics and Business Administration Faculty of Vilnius University (VU), one of the oldest universities in North-Eastern Europe, have shown a great interest in BitDegree’s new ideas for online learning and have entered into a joint research and development project that will explore new ways to motivate online learning through blockchain-based economic incentives and gamification elements. It will be the first research project in the world to assess the impacts of economic incentives with tangible monetary value on learning motivation of online students. In short — does paying to learn influence online learning success and most importantly, how?

BitDegree and Vilnius University partnership

“Research has shown that adding the elements of gamification, including incentives, into the learning process can increase students’ motivation and desire to complete a course. Competition and rewards for completed tasks increase students’ engagement and help them go deeper into the subject and farther in their learning journey. Together with the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration of Vilnius University, we’re aiming to identify the ways to leverage those elements to help the online course completion rates grow and to generate an even higher inflow of those using online education platforms,” says Ervinas Rimdeika, CEO and co-founder of BitDegree.

The first research investigating the link between economic incentives and online course completion rate

“Nobody has conducted research in this field before,” says VU professor Vytautas Dikčius. “It’s interesting from the scientific perspective, and it can effectively help turn the online education to be more successful and relevant to the job market. Economic incentives can ease the dilemma and show the way towards the right decision — to continue learning. In our research, we want to confirm this link and investigate the cases when we can expect positive outcomes.”

For this, nearly 800,000 EUR have been allocated to this project by the European Regional Development Fund under the program “Intellect. Common Scientific and Business Projects”. The total value is over 1.3 million Euro. Additional funds will be used to create even more valuable system in cooperation with experts from the best university in Lithuania. The joined effort will be based on consistent and scientifically valuable research. VU will isolate and run multiple pilots to identify the direction in this very broad field.

Validating BitDegree’s effort on a scientific level

This cooperation will blend into BitDegree’s overall aspiration to motivate more people to get their practical skills online fast, learning from the experts in their fields. We’ll actually investigate deeper the impact that our offered incentives make on students’ motivation to complete online courses. We’ve been testing our scholarship campaigns with companies from different fields, such as web hosting, management consulting, industrial control and automation, and we’ve got several upcoming campaigns including economic and employment incentives. We opened the window to an enlarging scope of research participants which will be used by scientists from VU in a well organized, scientifically valid way which will eventually bring more insights into this currently unexplored land.

VU research team will isolate their aims investigating the motivational impact made by economic incentives, by offered job opportunities, or both. BitDegree will craft the offers so that they can be used in such studies to get scientifically valuable results.

We’re proud and delighted that this cooperation will bring much more scientific weight and value in BitDegree’s plans and aspirations! In the next two years planned for this project, we’ll get stride by stride closer to clearer insights of how our ideas work in the real world, and to having more elaborated tools to tailor our motivation strategy for online learning.

BitDegree shooting upwards and onwards — always!

Online teaching is a challenge – but what about online learning?

The main issue teachers face when trying to move their lessons to the digital space is the fact that unlike in the traditional classroom, the educator no longer holds the power: it is hard to impose authority through a live stream or a video recording that can be closed with a single click. “In most cases, online teaching is not viable as a concept – however, online learning is. For it to work well, students first have to develop learning skills, such as self-regulation,” BitDegree’s co-founder and CEO Danielius Stasiulis explains.

To help the learners develop these skills and provide them with a better chance at effective lifelong learning, BitDegree and UT scientists are planning to build an open learner model (OLM), based on the principles of self-regulated learning (SRL). While educational theory defines SRL by cognition, metacognition, motivation, and emotion, there’s still a serious shortage of studies on the latter two factors – a gap that the project teams aim to tackle.

In the project’s final stages, BitDegree will use the results of the research to develop an online course builder that encapsulates the best instructional design practices. This way, educators around the world could easily adapt their material and teaching process for the digital space without losing its impact on students and add the benefits of accessibility, convenience, and advancement of their self-learning skills. The project was financed by the European Regional Development Fund, which has allocated 1,198,849.81 Eur in total to the project executors.

Combining the expertise of IT professionals and scientists

Founded in 2017, BitDegree is one of the most innovative EdTech startups in the world, recognized as the Global Champion of the Learning & Education category by the United Nations World Summit Awards (WSA) in March. According to BitDegree’s co-founder and CEO Danielius Stasiulis, “one of BitDegree’s objectives is to find a way to make online learning efficient and effective through empirical research and experimentation. We are delighted about this partnership with UT: it allows us to add a layer of fundamental research to our efforts and apply it in experiments in real-life settings.”

This isn’t the first time BitDegree takes part in academic research. In 2019, the startup teamed up with Vilnius University (VU) to analyze the impacts of economic incentives on online students' learning motivation. Now, it has joined forces with UT’s Center of Educational Technology – an international research center that has one of the leading research teams in this field in the Nordic-Baltic region.

“I find this project a promising opportunity to connect researchers and startup companies and develop something very innovative together. We know from our research that there’s a lack of tools that could systematically support online learning, specifically its different phases and areas of self-regulated learning. I hope we can design an OLM that could be applied in online courses all over the world to make them significantly more effective,” the head of UT’s Center of Educational Technology professor Margus Pedaste claims.