## 3 QualiChain Architecture, Pilot Concept, Research Questions, and Execution Methodology
### Pilot Execution Methodology
Students responded very positively to the functionalities that QualiChain can offer and concurred that it indeed meets their needs. For the evaluation of the QualiChain technical solution, several workshops, focus groups, and platform exhibitions took place with undergraduate and Ph.D. students as well as professors at the school, so that all three of the pilot's scenarios could be covered. A total of 50 undergraduate students were engaged through the various classes that are taught by the professors of the Decision Support Systems (DSS) lab. A total of 40 Ph.D. students were engaged through the DSS lab as well as other research labs of the ECE School. Finally, 11 professors were engaged via e-mails. For the selection of pilot participants, as mentioned in step 3 of the methodology, we asked students during courses, through e-mails, as well as by asking participating students to disseminate QualiChain through word of mouth. At the beginning of the project, we were ideally aiming for at least 50 participants (including undergraduate students, Ph.D. students, and professors). The fact that we managed to run the pilot with over 100 end users gives credence to the potential of QualiChain and solidifies the conclusions, lessons learned, and policy recommendations. Each of those groups of stakeholders were introduced to the platform separately. Undergraduate student workshops consisted of around 5-10 students each time. Ph.D. student workshops consisted of 10 students. Finally, professors were introduced to the platform one at a time. Each activity lasted around 1.5-2 h.  
The first 15 min of every platform exhibition activity were spent in introductions among the participants, the introduction to QualiChain and the specific pilot case, as well as the goals of the project and the affected stakeholders. Following that, participants were given the link to the platform and were requested to create an account. For every following action, the pilot representative spent 5-10 min introducing and explaining the various functionalities that the participants were going to use. This was to ensure that students and professors became familiar with the tools so that they could further use them after the workshop in their everyday lives in the university. For undergraduate students, the next action entailed the creation of their profile and more specifically filling in their CV in the platform. After that, students were requested to select courses from the course tab as well as fill in the courses that they have completed. The students were then introduced to the Multi-Criteria Decision Support System (MCDSS) and were requested to perform an analysis concerning the selection of a course among several of the options that were suggested to them via their profiles. Finally, they were introduced to the smart badge functionality and shown how to award their colleagues and professors with one or more of the available smart badges. Then, the participants were given the questionnaires for the evaluation of the QualiChain platform and were requested to fill them out after using the platform for at least one semester. The workshops with Ph.D. students were quite similar with a few key differences. First of all, after creating their account and profile, participants were shown how to declare the Ph.D. role on the platform. Following that, instead of courses, they were introduced to the jobs tab and were shown how to apply for a job offer that is available on the platform. The MCDSS was similarly introduced but the analysis performed concerned the selection of a skill among various alternatives so that they can enrich and advance their academic and professional profiles. The last actions entailed the tutorial for awarding smart badges and the evaluation questionnaires. Finally, professors were introduced to the platform in a similar way. The first things they were asked to do were to select the courses that they teach in the courses tab and transfer some of the theses they have published in the thesis tab.