SCRANTONCOIN: AN ACADEMIC EXPERIMENT AND PROTOTYPE DEVELOPMENT

ScrantonCoin is the first cryptocurrency created to be a part of the ecosystem of an academic program. ScrantonCoin was created by the University of Scranton's Entrepreneurship Program to encourage student engagement in activities on campus, and in their city. Research has shown that there is a correlation between student engagement in campus activities to satisfaction with the college experience. There is also research showing that student engagement and academic performance are positively correlated. A student project on ways to incentivize attendance in campus athletic events investigated various options that involved linking such attendance to redemption of various rewards. The first author of the present paper suggested the use of a bitcoin like cryptocurrency that could be used to redeem various rewards that would appeal to the students and the greater campus community. The initial thrust behind the development of ScrantonCoin was to use blockchain technology and cryptocurrency as a tool to foster student engagement with varsity athletics at the university. Subsequently, it became obvious that the cryptocurrency to be developed can serve a broader set of purposes: encouraging participation in co-curricular activities, mission driven service activities and serve as a “wallet” for users to facilitate financial transactions. ScrantonCoin can also be used to pay for products and access exclusive discounts at local businesses, serving as a link between the campus community and the local business community (retail stores, restaurants and supermarkets for example). Finally, the paper describes the development of the ScrantonCoin application and its subsequent operation. The project serves as a platform for an on-going case that can be utilized as an assessment tool for the student learning outcomes (abstract reasoning, systems thinking, collaboration and evaluation, and experimentation to achieve growth through scaling up) of the Entrepreneurship program to monitor student progress and meet the accreditation requirements of AACSB. Key words: Entrepreneurship, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Entrepreneurship