The numbers tell a vivid story. Only 11.8 percent of respondents reported currently teaching blockchain-related content, but 64.7 percent said they planned to introduce it during the following academic year. That surge in intent, the authors argue, signals strong bottom-up interest at the classroom level that has not yet been matched by institutional strategy, governance, or faculty-development plans. Another 23.5 percent had no immediate plans. The pattern suggests blockchain teaching in Jordan remains at an early, ad hoc stage, heavily reliant on individual faculty efforts rather than structured curriculum pathways.

When faculty were asked what they would focus on if they taught blockchain, technical development dominated, with 41.2 percent citing coding and smart contracts as their primary emphasis. But the responses also revealed the interdisciplinary character of the field: 17.6 percent pointed to legal and regulatory frameworks, 17.6 percent to supply chain and logistics applications, and 11.8 percent to business strategy and return on investment. A smaller group, 5.9 percent, focused on cryptoeconomics and tokenomics. The authors note that this spread mirrors international observations that blockchain is not merely a software-engineering topic but a socio-technical field attracting interest from engineering, business, law, and logistics disciplines alike.

The barriers faculty identified are telling. The lack of high-quality academic textbooks and case studies was the most frequently cited obstacle, selected by 41.2 percent of respondents. Limited personal time for specialized training came second at 23.5 percent, followed by inadequate technical software and laboratory infrastructure at 17.6 percent. The rapid pace of technological change, which makes curriculum updating difficult, was cited by 11.8 percent. These findings align with international reviews suggesting that blockchain education is hindered by immature teaching resources and limited opportunities for faculty upskilling, and they underscore that the challenge is organizational rather than purely technological.

Faculty were also asked what forms of institutional support they would value most. Pedagogical workshops on how to teach blockchain and access to industry partners for guest lectures and real case studies tied as the top priorities, each selected by 35.3 percent of respondents. Another 17.6 percent wanted a dedicated blockchain laboratory for student use, and 5.9 percent sought funding for professional certification. The authors interpret these preferences as evidence that adoption is not simply a matter of enthusiasm but requires structured capacity building, workload recognition, and material resources.

To move from these descriptive findings to a system-level framework, the study employed the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) perspective, supplemented by institutional theory. Technological factors refer to the properties and availability of blockchain platforms and infrastructure; organizational factors encompass institutional strategies, resources, and human capital; and environmental factors include regulatory regimes, accreditation requirements, and national digital-transformation agendas. The institutional lens adds coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures that shape adoption decisions, helping explain how faculty readiness may outpace system readiness in governance, regulation, and infrastructure.

Based on the survey evidence and expert appraisal, the authors developed a five-dimensional TOE-based framework encompassing strategic and policy alignment; governance, law, and regulation; technological and infrastructural readiness; pedagogical and curriculum integration; and stakeholder capacity and change management. The framework explicitly distinguishes two parallel uses of blockchain: as curriculum content in software engineering, fintech, logistics, governance, business, and law; and as institutional infrastructure for issuing digital credentials, student records, credit transfer, and document verification. These uses demand different actions — teaching requires curriculum design, case studies, laboratories, and faculty training, while infrastructure adoption requires governance rules, data protection safeguards, interoperability, and regulatory recognition.

The framework was subjected to initial content validation by a purposively selected panel of 12 Jordanian experts spanning higher education strategy, curriculum design, digital transformation, and policy. Item-level content validity indices indicated broad support: strategic and policy alignment and governance, law, and regulation each achieved an I-CVI of 1.00, while technological and infrastructural readiness, pedagogical and curriculum integration, and stakeholder capacity and change management each scored 0.92. Cross-cutting items on overall framework clarity and implementation sequence achieved 0.83, indicating acceptable content validity. When asked to identify the primary bottleneck dimension, experts most frequently cited governance, law, and regulation together with stakeholder capacity and change management, each selected by 33.3 percent of panelists, followed by technological and infrastructural readiness at 25.0 percent.

The framework is presented not as a static list of barriers and drivers but as a staged adoption matrix progressing through three phases: Exploration, characterized by ad hoc faculty-led pilots and awareness activities; Institutionalization, where blockchain is linked to university strategy, governance, curricula, and selected infrastructure pilots; and Ecosystem Integration, involving coordination between universities, employers, regulators, and government bodies on interoperable credentials and shared standards. The authors emphasize a recommended decision order: strategic and policy alignment should precede technology procurement, governance should precede both, pedagogical integration should follow to translate priorities into courses and laboratories, stakeholder capacity building should accompany these steps, and technological readiness should be scaled last, after academic, governance, pedagogical, and capacity conditions are defined. This sequencing, they argue, helps emerging higher education systems avoid disjointed pilots, unused laboratories, and credentialing systems that regulators do not recognize.

An exploratory subgroup comparison found that current blockchain teaching was identical across university types — 11.8 percent in both public and private institutions — and intention to teach next year did not differ significantly, suggesting that blockchain readiness is not a university-type-specific problem but a shared challenge warranting coordinated policy attention and resource development. The authors caution that the study remains exploratory, limited by purposive sampling, an uneven public–private distribution, and reliance on content validation rather than predictive modeling. Future research, they suggest, should employ representative, longitudinal, comparative, and mixed-method designs to examine how institutions move across adoption stages and which interventions best support sustainable blockchain adoption in higher education.

Subject of Research: Blockchain adoption in higher education

Article Title: Blockchain in emerging higher education systems: a TOE-based framework for adoption informed by faculty evidence from Jordan

Article References: Saraireh, I. M., Albtoush, F., Al-Btoush, M. A. K. A., & Alziadin, S. (2026). Blockchain in emerging higher education systems: a TOE-based framework for adoption informed by faculty evidence from Jordan. Frontiers in Blockchain, 9, Article 1914193. https://doi.org/10.3389/fbloc.2026.1914193

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fbloc.2026.1914193

Keywords: blockchain, higher education, Jordan, TOE framework, faculty survey, digital credentials, educational technology, adoption framework, emerging, higher, education, systems