Smart Contracts in Higher Education: A Systematic Literature Review

Recently, Blockchain technology, especially Smart Contracts have become a popular subject for research in multiple fields. For the Higher Education domain, this trustless, decentralized technology is seen as disruptive, it holds the potential to revolutionize many practices and concepts in the educational field. This work aims to provide a systematic review of the current state of the smart contracts’ applications in Higher Education. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we systematically reviewed 52 papers published since 2015. Our findings (i) reveal patterns and trends in the Higher Education issues solved by Smart Contracts, (ii) identify Blockchain and Smart Contracts features used in the literature, (iii) compile benefits and limitations of the use of Smart Contracts, and (iv) distill future directions of research.