What are some of the challenges or barriers your institution faces whendeveloping new credentials?

31% strongly agree or agree that their institutionregularly lists alumni as a target market for microcredential programs,

how well do microcredential initiatives align with the strategicplan of your institution?

Respondents more involved in the credentialing process were generally lesslikely to say institutionally offered microcredentials are extremely or very effec-tive in competing with those offered by emerging entities, while respondentsnot at all involved were most likely to say they are extremely or very effective.

How involved are you in the process of developing and implementingcredentialing initiatives, such as stackable credentials, non-credit to credit pathways,and microcredentials, among others, at your institution?

Figure 3: Decrease in Perceived Fiscal Benefits of Microcredentials by Year

Notably, traditional mindsets and legacysystems are seen as far greater barriers in 2025 (61%) than in 2021 (5%), high-lighting a growing tension between innovation and institutional resistance tochange.

When credential innovation is em-bedded within an institution’s strategic plan, programs are not only betteraligned with mission and goals but also more likely to deliver fiscal benefitsand effectively compete with other providers. The growing emphasis on work-force development and professional advancement signals a shift towardoutcome-driven design, positioning microcredentials as an important bridgebetween education and employment. Institutions that intentionally embedthese initiatives into their strategic priorities and collaborate closely with in-dustry partners will be best positioned to deliver programs that are bothmission-aligned and market-relevant.Executive Summary

Comprehensive Learner Record Standard Transcript Guide

1EdTech's Comprehensive Learner Record Standard (CLR Standard)

Mendee said a recent survey found that 85% of employers look for candidates who have both a degree and micro-credentials. “Micro-credentials give students a competitive edge by highlighting their skills in ways that stand out to employers and graduate schools,” Mendee said.

Digital badges play a growing role in workforce development by enabling employers and higher education institutions to collaborate on defining badge criteria for skill verification and competency-based hiring.

Their portability and verifiable nature make them a flexible and accessible way to recognize and communicate skills (Bowen & Thomas, 2014)

Micro-Credentials and Digital Badges: An Exploration of Definitions and Implications in Higher Education and Workforce

Current Programming Partnerships Across Academic

The platform allows students to complete assessments of their skills—including hard-to-measure soft skills, like communication, resilience and ability to collaborate—and present them in a “skills-based transcript” they can present to employers,

Issuers also have an opportunity to include projects to work on or an assessment so learners can apply and better retain what they are learning. 92% of learners want this but only 34% of issuers offer this.

issuers should track learner engagement post-launch to optimize their courses. Unfortunately, most issuers aren’t tracking engagement metrics and don’t have a sense of where learners are finding value and where they’re dropping off. Less than half of issuers track what content or courses learners are most engaged with (34%), which learners are most engaged (25%), course completion time (24%), and where learners drop off (14%) — missing out on critical insights to improve their programs

students are matched with employers after a screening interview based on their major and goals, and they have final say in where they intern. The process is meant to be personalized

Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun outlines as essential literacies in Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. In addition to technical and data literacies, he shares two key components of human literacy. First, a set of “catalytic capacities” that include: Initiative and self-reliance Comfort with risk Flexibility and adaptability Second, a set of “creative capacities” that include: Opportunity recognition, or the ability to see and experience problems as opportunities to create solutions Creative innovation, or the ability to create solutions without clearly defined structures Future innovation, or the disposition to orient toward future developments in society

Unlike traditional degrees, digital credentials allow potential employers to verify skills and students to showcase these skills

institutions need clarity to create coherent credentialing ecosystems that are aligned with their mission and the market.

Stackable credentials are also critical to the “Some College, No Credential” (SCNC) market, which reached a total of 36.8 million under the age of 65 in the U.S., up 2.9% from the previous year. Recent research from UPCEA and StraighterLine found that 76% of SCNC adults said being able to earn alternative or microcredentials that could stack toward a degree would increase or greatly increase their interest in completing their degree

Lack of standard definitions makes it harder for learners to navigate options and for employers to assess value

companies with external partnerships that provide employee training or professional development increased from 54% in 2022 to 68% in 2023, and among those without existing relationships, 61% of companies would be interested in developing these partnerships.

CVCL_1685

Detailed Tables of ContentsCourses that garner high enrollment often present detailed tablesof contents. These structures provide a transparent overview of thecourse content, allowing learners (or corporate purchasers) to assessthe relevance and alignment with their learning objectives. The termsfound in the tables of contents can also play a significant role inimproving search engine optimization (SEO

That feels like the kind of distinction employers make between Princeton and The University of Phoenix. They know those providers and can make sound assumptions about job seekers holding credentials from these places and programs

Because there were so many, because there was no regulation or oversight to assure quality or competency, because there was no standardization or segmentation of badges, people had no idea what they meant.

For existing students, the priority is immediate recognition of skills and knowledge in the major or complementary to the major, helping the student earn a fellowship or prepare for graduate school, to encourage persistence and completion, and to help students compete in the job market

Each microcredential is a substantive learning experience with set learning outcomes and assessments where student work is produced. While community building or participation in meetings or events can be important parts of the student experience, they do not rise to the level of a SUNY microcredential.

All work is aligned with key pillars set by SUNY’s Board of Trustees and Chancellor John B. King, Jr., including student success; research and scholarship; diversity, equity, and inclusion; and economic development and upward mobility

employer verification

For nearly half of the lower-wage employment analyzed, we identify at least one higher-paying occupation requiring similar skills in the same metro area. We also find that transitions to similar higher-paying occupations would represent an average annual increase in wages of nearly $15,000, or 49 percent.

Our vision is for members of the UMBC community to amass hundreds of microcredentials throughout their careers

Better understanding of what learning described by credentials prepares earners to do in theworkforce, at the skill level. This may be a reframing of competencies toward position descriptionlanguage

In the list of top ten skills rising in importance between now and 2027, three relate to self-efficacy: “curiosity and lifelong learning” (ranked fourth), “resilience, flexibility, and agility” (ranked fifth), and “motivation and self-awareness” (ranked eighth).

First, microcredentialsshould be part of thestrategic programportfolio for all institutionsof higher education.Additionally, institutionsshould resource theirmicrocredential activitiesappropriately forsustainability and growth

only 69% said that senior leadership at their institution has embracedmicrocredentials

(20%) did not include microcredentials as astrategic priority

RRID:CVCL_0547

This is often described as a mainreason why qualification systems not opened to all types of credentials

attribute a quality label to credentials outsidethe formal system

The mainfactors limiting the level of trust include: doubts about the quality of somemicrocredentials, no agreed standards for quality assurance, and uncertainty as towhether certain microcredentials will be recognised by national authorities,employers or education and training providers

Assigning credits to learning outcomes allows for the accumulationof units of learning and provides for transferability from one setting to another forvalidation and recognition. Interviewees representing countries in which VETsystems are modularised indicated that modules are designed to indicate a set oflearning outcomes that are expressed in terms of credits. The interviewees fromnational authorities and VET providers commonly agreed that the introduction ofmodular structures in VET and the application of a learning outcomes-basedapproach was set to provide more individualised training paths, enabling accessand progression for learners.

The European approach to microcredentials(European Commission, 2020a) also highlights the importance of clearly definedlearning outcomes as a way to promote overall transparency and provide detailedinformation regarding what a learner is expected to know and is able to do

microcredentials must be transparent and understandable and shouldinclude summary of critical information such as:(a) the title;(b) the duration of a learning activity;(c) provider of the course;(d) description of the content;(e) learning resources;(f) type of assessment;(g) credits attributed to the course;(h) prerequisites needed for enrolment;(i) learning outcomes;(j) body ensuring the quality of the course;(k) options for stackability, if any

Playbooks have had over 14,000 views by over 6,000 users since published.

Recruited 30 new members to the Network to engage in planning and implementation of incremental credentials. Among those are state systems of Hawai'i, Minnesota, the University of Texas, and the City University of New York (CUNY) System; and 24 public and private colleges and universities across 22 states.

alternative credential programming and financialmodels are highly decentralized across an institution – so much so that it may bedifficult for an institution to have a good grasp of its entire portfolio. Adding alternativecredentials to an institution’s strategic priorities will firm up program and business modelplanning and execution

First is the strategic priority within their institution. Ifalternative credentials have been embraced by senior leadership and included in thestrategic plan, they are more likely to have the necessary resources allocated to them

Americans’ views of what a college education should be tend to prioritize specific, workplace-related skills and knowledge rather than general intellectual development and personal growth. Half of Americans say that the main purpose of college should be to teach specific skills and knowledge that can be used in the workplace, while 35% think its main purpose should be to help students grow and develop personally and intellectually and 13% volunteer that these objectives are equally important.

At BYU-Pathway Worldwide, this approach has been associated with a 20% increase in student retention (Marcus, 2020). These examples demonstrate the positive impact of earning a certification or certification on persistence, retention and graduation rates for learners in baccalaureate programs.

One study examining short-term credentials embedded in associate degree programs found that these short-term credentials had positive impacts on retention and degree completion

This six-part series tells the ACD story of exploration, innovation, and learning

approaches to align data analytics microcredentials with undergraduate experiences;

WCET

colleges will also have to invest in a major effort to “convince graduates that part of paying it forward is to respond to surveys aimed at determining what worked for them.”

gauge the value of the microcredentials they offer, a step I suspect many have not yet been brave enough to take. That calls for tracking how often learners claim their awarded microcredential and share it to a professional networking site like LinkedIn, and for collecting feedback on why they did or didn’t. Another suggestion from the primer: track the number of microcredential learners who go on to enroll in a degree program

Digital Micro-Credential Efficacy and Impact on Learner Confidence

However, the graduation certificate is still paper-based and does not fit employers’ digitized recruitment processes. Digitizing the graduation certificate is overdue to align with the digitized processes of employers and universities. However, there is only a few research on that issue. This paper aims to conduct a systematic literature analysis. Therefore, we investigated 147 articles in the context of research on digital credentials.

Complete Solo Teaching Requirement / Final which requires 10 hours of classes as solo instructor.

Proposed effective human resources initiatives based on workforce analytic

Once the awarding and registration systems are in place, institutions should also integrate with a modern CRM solution to attract and manage student interest, support, and personalized communications to increase enrollment and engagement. The CRM needs to support career services and other experiential learning departments as the school looks to build outside relationships with organizations and industry partners to provide real-world learning experiences and assessment opportunities for students

How are you going to maintain quality? Who will teach the program? Who will oversee it? How will you assess the success?

If non-degree or alternative credentials were stackable, overhalf (56%) of respondents said this would increase theirorganization’s interest in non-degree or alternative credentials.Stackable credentials would greatly increase interest for 24%

Respondents most often agree or strongly agree that non-degree or alternative credentials have helped their organizationfill existing skills gaps (74%) and that they are helping to improvethe quality of their workforce (73%)

assessment

Appendix F: Questions Universities Can Ask Certification Bodies to Assess Quality of Certifications

“Public research universities are committed to improving the workforce outcomes of their students and to addressing the workforce needs of local economies. This approach can ensure students that their credentials will have value to the labor market, and it can ensure employers that graduates have the skills required to perform in the workplace.”

t be issued for unevaluated learning accomplishments, such as the mere completion of a series of tasks, attendance at events, or for learning that has not been assessed, as competency and learning accomplishment evaluation is very important.

ental responsibility – Regulation (EC) No 2201/2003 – Substantive and temporal scope – Definition of ‘civil matters’ – Decision concerning the taking into care and placement of children outside the family home – Public law measures for child protection)