Hands-On Blockchain Teaching and Learning: Integrating IPFS and Oracles Through Open-Source Practical Use Cases

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Congratulations on a precise, technical paper which contributes valuable educational insights! The following humble suggestions are offered respectfully if helpful in clarifying language.  Line numbers are cited parenthetically for reference.

• (page 1, line 23) replace "all the" with "desired"
• (page 8, line 323) replace "problems to understand it" with either "understanding" or "difficulty grasping"
• (page 8, line 332) replace "include" with "includes"
• (page 16, line 496) replace "blockchain" with "blockchain's" or revise to "blockchain decentralization and transparency enhances..."
• (page 17, line 549) replace "which allows to end" with "allows ending" or "facilitates ending"
• (page 17, line 581) insert "in which" between "available election" and "and then"
• (page 19, line 626) clarify "gas costs" whether power consumption, compute efficiency, energy generating costs, etc.
• (page 20, line 634) replace "allow to represent" with "allows representation of"
• (page 20, line 637) replace "keeps being" with "remains"
• (page 20, line 637) revise "to securely manage...in an efficient manner" to "secure and efficient management of"
• (page 20, line 643) replace "to reward" with "rewarding"
• (page 20, line 654) consider singular/plural use re: "metadata of such items need(s) to be securely managed"
• (page 21, line 669) again consider singular/plural re: "such data...retrieve them"
• (page 21, line 677) replace "This way, not only can be known" with "Doing so provides greater transparency beyond"
• (page 21, line 691) replace "proved" with "proven"
• (page 22, line 694) replace "demonstrate" with either "show" or "instruct"

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable comments, which have certainly helped us to improve the manuscript. Please find attached our detailed responses to the comments. In order to ease the labor of the reviewers, in the new manuscript we colored in red the differences with the previous version of the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the effort dedicated in preparing your manuscript. The topic is highly relevant and presents a detailed, much-needed approach to integrating complex blockchain topics into Computer Science and Engineering curricula. Below are my suggestions for improvement.

Strengths:

• The study is well-structured, beginning by establishing the growing importance of blockchain technology. It then effectively highlights the necessity of teaching advanced blockchain topics, followed by an examination of various blockchain learning and teaching examples.
• The teaching methodology is well-structured and comprehensive, covering foundational to advanced blockchain topics. The key structure and learning approach of the methodology is clearly captured and presented. It effectively combines theoretical lectures with practical labs, collaborative tasks and a final project provide hands-on, experiential learning that reinforces key concepts and skills. The course design aligns well with learning goals and the assessment methods are clear and balanced, supporting the evaluation of student understanding.

Areas for Improvement:

1. In the section on practical real-world use cases (line 169), I recommend including references to previous research that documents the teaching of complex blockchain topics such as IPFS and oracles through practical, real-world use cases. Examples to consider are Bryant University and Bentley University (2019), A Credentials Verifier using Blockchain and IPFS (2023), and Data Integrity Verification in Network Slicing using Oracles and Blockchain (2022). Incorporating these sources will enrich this section of your research paper providing context around existing use case applications.

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable comments, which have certainly helped us to improve the manuscript. Please find attached our detailed responses to the comments. In order to ease the labor of the reviewers, in the new manuscript we colored in red the differences with the previous version of the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

In this paper, authors address the gap in blockchain education by presenting two open-source use cases that integrate smart contracts, an oracle, and an IPFS-based storage subsystem to support advanced decentralized application (dApp) development. Recognizing the teaching challenges of complex topics like IPFS and oracles, the proposed use cases provide practical, hands-on resources for professors, students, researchers, and developers to explore decentralized storage, data integrity, and secure external data integration within Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs). However, following are the few suggestions and recommendations that could help to improve the overall quality of the paper:

1. add contributions of the paper at the end of the intro section
2. it is suggested to present section 3.1 in tabular form to avoid so many bullets. this will also help to reduce the length of the paper and attraction of the readers.
3. captions of the tables should be on top of the tables.
4. Make sure all the tables and figures are cited and explained within text. for example table 5 and 6 are not cited.
5. Figure 8 is not readable
6. Authors should provide future directions
7. Outline study limitations

 

Author Response

The authors would like to thank the reviewer for his/her valuable comments, which have certainly helped us to improve the manuscript. Please find attached our detailed responses to the comments. In order to ease the labor of the reviewers, in the new manuscript we colored in red the differences with the previous version of the article.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors have addressed all the comments