The big ideas behind microcredentials

Sound clip: You’re listening to a Times Higher Education podcast.

Sara Custer: Hello and welcome to this episode of the Times Higher Education podcast. I’m one of your hosts, Sara Custer.

Miranda Prynne: And I’m Miranda Prynne.

Sara Custer: Micro-credentials, badges, bundling, certificates. The list of alternative credentials for higher education is growing, partly in response to learner and employer demand, but also because of the dire economic situation that universities find themselves in post-pandemic. But for those who haven’t even dared to dip their toe into the alternative credential pond, where do they even begin? How do you train your staff and make sure that those credit-bearing courses fit into your institution’s curriculum? And most importantly, how do you make sure that they’re up to quality standards? Two people who might help us answer these questions and others about innovations in providing higher education are Tim Blackman and Kemi Jona. Now, Miranda, you spoke to Kemi. Tell us about Kemi.

Miranda Prynne: Yes, I did. Kemi is the assistant vice chancellor for digital innovation and enterprise learning at Northeastern University and has a wealth of experience developing lifelong learning. He currently heads up the design and development of digital learning platforms and enterprise partnerships at Northeastern. So he’s launched partnerships with like GE, IBM, Google, Coursera and many more. And he’s also worked with other leading universities like Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Columbia on developing innovative online programs. So as you can imagine, he very much sees lifelong learning, and we spoke kind of more specifically really about micro-credentials as part of that, as a definite key component of the future of higher education.

Sara Custer: It’s interesting because I spoke with Tim Blackman, who is the vice chancellor at the Open University, which perhaps has a lot of history in this alternative form of education. So for anyone who doesn’t know, the Open University based in the UK has been offering remote higher education since 1969, and it’s been developing free short courses with an eye on lifelong learning since at least 2006 when they launched OpenLearn. And of course, in 2012, they launched the fee-based MOOC platform, FutureLearn. What was interesting about Tim is he also spoke about partnerships and how important they are, but he also said that when the OU with such a rich history is looking to develop beyond what they’ve already established, he says that the shelf life of knowledge isn’t what it was 50 years ago and people now need to update and refresh. And that’s what the OU is responding to when they’re looking to innovate in the way that they’re providing higher education. He also gave some pointers for anyone new who is starting out and how blockchain will be integral to lifelong learning. So let’s start with Tim.

Sara Custer: Tim, hello. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Tim Blackman: Hi, Sara. It’s great to be invited. Really pleased to be joining you.

Sara Custer: I mean, I could not think of anybody more appropriate to be speaking with us about alternative credentials on today’s episode. And I know that the OU has been a provider of what we’re now calling lifelong learning, but you’ve been a provider of it for a number of years. For people who perhaps aren’t aware, could you give us a brief explanation of just the different kinds of courses that the OU provides outside of your, I guess, core course providing of degree programs?

Tim Blackman: Sure. So the OU has been around for now a little over 50 years. What we found is in 1969, always been innovatory in how we’ve provided higher education. And I guess I’ll say very briefly something about what you could call our core provision so you can understand how other types of provision fits in. But our core undergraduate curriculum, on which we’ve got about 180,000 students now, is based on nearly 500 modules. So they are between 30 and 60 credits, which is 300 to 600 learning hours, 10 learning hours per credit. So our module structure is those courses of 30 to 60 credits, nearly 500 of those, and then they lead to just over a hundred different degree qualifications, along with what we call milestone qualifications. So they nest within the degree. So you can graduate with a certificate or a diploma or go on to your degree. But yeah, as you said, we’ve increasingly been complementing that core provision with other types of learning opportunity, which has really been to respond to a range of needs that are out there, needs for that new type of opportunity that’s an alternative or frequently a complement to a long in-depth degree course. And there’s lots of reasons for doing that. There’s lots of drivers, but fundamentally that change in terms of us diversifying the types of course we provide is about what’s happening in the wider economy, wider society, specifically the shortening shelf life of knowledge and skills. It’s just necessary to keep refreshing what’s learned as technology changes, as research accelerates. The shelf life of knowledge is just not what it was 50 years ago. So people need to update, retrain, refresh, and that’s what we’re responding to. And it takes a whole range of forms.

Tim Blackman: We now provide what in the UK are called higher and degree apprenticeships. So those are sort of work-based learning qualifications at diploma or degree level. We’ve got about 3,000 employees now taking Open University apprenticeships, and that’s been a new type of provision in higher education in the UK that’s now four, five, six years old based on a new corporate tax that funds them. So apprenticeships are free for the student, for the employee to take. Another type of provision is we now run skills boot camps. So these are intensive courses on a specific topic like software development or IT operations. So we’re now involved in running several of those across the country. And then there’s a whole range of different types of short course. Some are free, others are for a fee. They include micro-credentials, for example, where there’s academic credit attached to the short course, or they can be totally open courses, not accredited, but they may be badged. So we have quite a few badged open courses where there’s a certificate of recognition at the end for completing the course. So there’s a whole range of different types of short course now that we are providing, some with credit, many with employer endorsement, and many that are actually designed with employers, sometimes specifically for that company or that government department, sometimes to be made available openly. That’s a very quick roundup of what’s going on.

Sara Custer: It really highlights all of the different ways that universities can be using their fantastic content and curriculum and expertise in a variety of ways outside of the traditional three- or four-year degree. Tim, forgive me for my ignorance here, but if you are offering micro-credentials that carry academic credit but clearly aren’t part of a larger degree program, what’s the point of that and what happens to that credit?

Tim Blackman: Yeah, well, I think we’re going to see students, learners, employees over a whole lifetime accumulate different types of qualification, undertake different kinds of course for credit or not for credit, rather than have their single degree that lasts them a lifetime. And that then means that for employers and other people who want to verify what it is that somebody has achieved, having a single source to be able to go to that’s trustworthy and sustainable becomes very important rather than going around all the different institutions that you took your course from. And that’s what blockchain offers: the ability just for a learner to self-serve and put that information there about their qualification. But it’s verified, and other people wanting to verify what somebody has achieved can go there and see a single version of the truth out there in a essentially in a repository that’s sitting in the World Wide Web. So I think, although there’s a lot more work to do on blockchain and how that might become the new sort of global academic registry, if you like, you know, that’s where this information usually is is in an academic registry. But there’s a potential for the academic registry to now be in the cloud and serving all purposes and everyone as a single version of the truth as people become lifelong learners.

Sara Custer: And is that something that you guys are developing at the OU?

Tim Blackman: Yes, we are. We’re currently looking at the feasibility of how blockchain could become our own registry in time. There’s work to be done around the security and the reliability, but I think it’s definitely the direction of travel.

Sara Custer: I’m wondering how a lot of universities are now kind of considering this now and trying to figure out how it fits into a traditional curriculum and how they do it and how they design it. How are you at the OU now looking at a post-pandemic labor market, different economic demands? How are you guys looking at your current short course apprenticeship micro-credential offering and how are you going to respond to the current climate?

Tim Blackman: Yeah, a lot of what we’re providing is responding to evidence from various types of labor market analysis. Some of it, frankly, is test and learn. We will launch something and see how it does and learn from that. So, and some of it is commissioned from a company or government. We have a lot of our short courses now that are actually funded by the governments in England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland. Higher education has devolved in the UK, and they’re funding our courses so we can make them available free. And that’s been very much a COVID development where governments have been concerned about unemployment. We’ve had a lot of people on furlough where they’ve had a wage subsidy to see them through the difficult times that we’ve been having. But these courses have been commissioned and made available through the Open University so that people can look and think about their career options, think about developing a new string to their bow, a new skill in coding, or they might try a module in healthcare, thinking, yeah, that might be a good career change for me because there’s still lots of demand for healthcare workers. So there’s a range of ways we are funding these. And there’s a range of ways we’re putting them out there from test and learn to a direct actual commission or contract to provide this.

Sara Custer: And is that something that you would recommend to perhaps your peer institutions? I know there is no real peer because the OU is so unique, but to other perhaps brick and mortar traditional institutions. Is that something you would recommend? Is that kind of test it and try and see what works? And I’m curious if you have any other advice for someone who’s looking expanding this area.

Tim Blackman: Yes, great question. Obviously, it’s helpful when you’re working in partnership with an agency and you know you’ve been commissioned to produce the modules and you’ve got a contract. We work closely, for example, with job centers in the UK that are advising people who are unemployed or looking for new work. And we provide courses that are part of the resources that the advisor will have available for their clients. To say, well, you know, here’s some courses, a range of things, not just directly vocational, but on well-being and counselling and that kind of thing. I think we’re able to test and learn at the OU. We have a deliberate commitment to that. And we’ve been able to build a substantial internal capability, which is great. Other universities may think more about outsourcing and using a third-party developer. We’ve found developing our internal capability to be a good thing to do because we’ve been learning a lot and not always getting things right first time round, and then the feedback on that comes back and we get it right next time round. And also, there’s lots, as you know, internal processes in universities around quality assurance accreditation. So it’s sometimes quite hard for third-party developers to work with those processes. So if we’re doing it in-house, we can get the alignment with the governance, academic governance processes that many of these courses still need to go through, especially if they’ve got credit attached to them. Because whatever the length of the course, if there’s credit attached to them, then we are under regulation quality assurance requirements. Regardless of how short the course is, if it’s got credit, it has to be treated the same as any other course, however long it is. So we’re finding it best to work in-house, but you do need scale to be able to do that.

Sara Custer: Of course, and curriculum developers is a new job title that perhaps wasn’t so central to university strategies two years ago, but is certainly becoming much more important. And perhaps there’s a bit of a lack of that professionalism right now in higher education. Any sort of advice in terms of kind of considerations that universities should start out with if they’re looking to develop a micro-credential offering or a short course offering? Where should they even begin?

Tim Blackman: I think working in partnership is a really good way to go. So if you’re working with a company or an agency and they want a particular type of training provision, that’s a great start. But there’s a lot of general interest out there among learners across the world. So there is a market to just put courses on your platform and with a bit of market research, but see how they do. And we’ve been evolving a lot of our courses through that kind of thing. We also, I mean, there’s a long tradition at the Open University of working in teams, teams of people to produce a course, multi-professional teams. You’ve mentioned course developers, but editors, graphic designers, the academics themselves, the people who will be tutoring the students. So we find working as a team is a very good way to produce a sort of high-quality product. And if we’re working with an employer, for instance, we’ll bring them in and they’ll be part of the team. So we’ve got that insight right from the start in how the course needs to work and what it needs to achieve in terms of the study goals for the students, for the employees.

Sara Custer: The term micro-credentials has been kind of banging around higher education circles for a while now, and it’s kind of been a radical idea that was kind of on the outskirts a little bit, not necessarily something that all institutions were embracing. And there have certainly been criticisms of it. And as we’re kind of developing the idea, those criticisms are continuing. And one of the recent ones was from two academics at the University of Toronto, Leesa Wheelahan and Gavin Moodie, who wrote a recent journal article that was criticizing the benefits of micro-credentials, saying that they are allowing employers to disinvest in professional development and leaving individuals second-guessing the labor market. I’m just wondering what your response to that would be, and if you think there is any risk that micro-credentials are now being developed by universities and companies for economic gain more than for student benefit.

Tim Blackman: Yeah, I read that piece. I didn’t really sort of recognize their criticism. It would be interesting to just see a bit more evidence. I mean, we’re a public research university at the OU. We wouldn’t produce a course that we didn’t think would be a benefit for one type of learner or another. Yes, we are often testing because often the way to find, as I’ve mentioned, that there is or there isn’t demand is to put the course out there and see what happens. So we do some of that. The strategic reason we’re doing it at the OU is to reach new kinds of learner. And in fact, in many ways, the most sort of economically sound provision we have is our core curriculum, our undergraduate modules and degrees. And these other types, of course, are not particularly producing more surplus profit, whatever, and we’re not a profit-making university, but we reinvest our surplus back into the institution. We do produce some courses for FutureLearn, which is one of our, which is our sort of ed tech startup, six, seven years old now, which is a for-profit. But that FutureLearn is aimed at a sort of global market of career developers, professional developers who want different types of course. So we produce some content for that platform as well. But it’s all about, for us, it’s all about need and responding to need. And as long as there’s the quality assurance there, as long as there’s the regulation, I think we feel pretty safe doing it in terms of this is higher education evolving.

Tim Blackman: You know, what my own view is that the idea that there’s something special about what in England is the 360-credit degree course that takes three or four years to do. What is special about that? It’s a in some ways it’s a twentieth century, if not nineteenth century, sort of thought pattern that thinks, yeah, this is the core thing that higher education should be doing. I think what we’re now seeing is that there’s a diversity of types of learning that students want. Some will want that sort of concentrated study when they’re 18, 19 years old. Others will want to take some of that, maybe a year or two of it, and then come back and top up or change direction or change level. Some students now will do a degree and then they’ll do a vocational qualification that might be at a lower level in the qualifications framework, but it gives them the vocational qualification in electronics or in I don’t know, an area like arboriculture, because that’s what they want to do, but they’ve done their degree as well. So, I think we’re seeing more of a kind of portfolio type thinking. I mean, we respond to that at the OU with our open degree, for example, where you can really take a whole mix of different topics and you can take it over six, seven years or longer. And then, when you’re ready, you can essentially sort of cash your credit in for a qualification. But the students are taking the modules because that’s what they feel they need at that time. So, the ability to scaffold these courses and then, if the student wants to, to then cash it in for a qualification when they’ve got enough credit, I think things are moving in that direction. But it’s dual track. These courses have value in and of themselves, these short courses, but the option always to scaffold them and to submit for a qualification, I think, always needs to be there because the qualifications are more portable. You might do a course that your employer has commissioned or encouraged you to go on, or that you yourself think you need to do, that’s got some kind of industry verification, and that may serve an immediate purpose. But later on in your career, you may well find that it’s the qualification that counts when you change employer or even move sector. So I think that ability to get the qualification is still important, but there are different types of qualification as well as different types of course. At the Open University, we’re one of only two universities in the UK now that have been accredited to deliver what are called higher technical qualifications. So these are shorter than degrees and they’re focused on qualifying in a specific occupation. And we’re doing that because we think that’s part of having a comprehensive offer. Some students want to take a degree that’s not so directly linked to a specific occupation, but can lead to a number of different occupations. Others do want to make that commitment and qualify in an occupation. Others are not so concerned about getting that occupational standard but just want to build a portfolio of competencies that they can show an employer that they’ve got this range of competencies.

Sara Custer: You’re calling it a portfolio. I’ve also heard it called bundling. With the new embrace of micro-credentials and these portfolios, has the door been opened to universities even accepting more and different types of alternative credentials? And are there any that you think are on the horizon, kind of ripe to be developed?

Tim Blackman: Yeah, well, I mean, for some time now, and we’re not alone at the Open University, we’ve had quite sophisticated processes for giving credit for prior work experience, different types of qualification. We have what’s called an Open Box module at the Open University where you can submit evidence of your professional experience, and then we will give that credit and we will accept that credit onto a number of different qualification pathways. So, I think this another development I think is very important is the recognized experience. It’s very relevant to lifelong learning, and then for that experience to be able to count towards credit and build a qualification, that’s very important. So, it’s all about flexibility, in my view, flexibility in recognizing what’s been learned and accrediting it, flexibility in terms of how you build up your qualification, flexibility in the levels and topics you can take and still get academic recognition for it. These are all processes, I think, where robust quality assurance is essential. So that’s the risk that this starts to become too self-service, too unregulated. I think it’s one reason why I think universities still have an edge on a lot of private companies in this space and employers themselves is that being part of a national quality assurance framework is tremendously important in terms of, as I mentioned, the portability of the qualification, the recognition of the qualification. So while we’re innovating all the time on what we recognise for a qualification and how you can scaffold your way to that qualification, having a robust quality assurance regime at national level where you’re accountable is tremendously important.

Sara Custer: Yeah, especially if you are allowing students to kind of pick and choose what modules they take and what credits they pull together to become a degree, that clearly needs to be something that A, has a quality assurance behind it, but is also meeting employers’ needs or is going to lead to a job that they eventually want to get or whatever step they want to take after they graduate.

Tim Blackman: Absolutely. And part of that quality assurance and that accountability is also information advice guidance. So this flexibility needs to be accompanied by really good student advice so that they understand what their options are and what their choices may lead to. So I think information advice guidance has become a lot more important now. We certainly put a lot of resource into that with student advisors, associate lecturers, but we’re also automating a lot of that too, so that a lot of the guidance for students is coming through prompters and recommenders where the algorithm recognises what the student has and what their study goal is and then provides them with their options. So automation in this field is, I think, a very positive development because it’s about sort of personalising that advice. But we certainly still have a lot of human beings advising our students, especially those who are, for example, going down the path of the open degree where they don’t necessarily understand what the options are and what they lead to. So information advice guidance is tremendously important.

Sara Custer: Great, Tim, thank you so much again for your time. This has been really, really interesting to kind of look under the bonnet of what’s happening at the OU and to learn about all the fascinating and flexible options that you’re developing and providing your students. So thank you so much for that.

Tim Blackman: Thank you. It’s been great to be able to talk about this. And yeah, I think this is a very exciting topic. We’re going to see, I think, lots of innovation in this whole area of what is higher education in the future. Exciting things to come.

Sara Custer: Absolutely.

Miranda Prynne: So it’s really interesting hearing what Tim had to say because, of course, a lot of it does chime with what Kemi had to say from, I suppose, a slightly different perspective, certainly a very different institution. But what they’re clearly both agreed upon is the fact that there is a growing need and thus demand for ongoing learning and upskilling and that what you learn at university will not, if you learn when you’re sort of 18, 20, will not necessarily remain relevant for 30 years. One point that Kemi made was that while he didn’t say that the three-year degree programme didn’t have any place, he did point out that it has been one of those unchallenged norms of higher education based on a world that no longer really exists. And therefore, there is definite room to look at new ways of providing higher education that may in this day and age prove just as effective and fit more easily within people’s lives.

Miranda Prynne: Kemi, much of your work is focused on creating new lifelong learning pathways for learners of all ages. And we’re hearing a lot about micro-credentials relating to sort of lifelong learning these days. Where do you think they sit among the many avenues to learning that could help institutions remain competitive in the fast-changing higher education landscape?

Kemi Jona: That’s a great question, Miranda. And as you suggest, there’s a lot of thought and certainly debate going on. You know, I think to best understand micro-credentials, especially for those who’ve been in academia, is to kind of go back and ask ourselves: why do we have degrees that are three years long in the UK or four years long in the US? Where did that number come from? And why is that the right number of years? And, you know, why is a course a semester, you know, term long? These all are sort of arbitrary measures. And when we start talking about micro-credentials, really, we’re just asking the question: you know, is that unit of measures, that size or duration, is that appropriate for what the audience or the learners want? And I think that’s a useful and productive question that we should be asking all the time.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I suppose the pandemic has arguably brought those questions to the fore a little more than they were before. I don’t know. Do you feel that’s a fair statement?

Kemi Jona: I think the pandemic has certainly brought almost everything about higher ed and workforce training into new focus. Certainly, you know, we’re well aware that a lot of the jobs that disappeared are not, in fact, going to come back or not in the same form with the same skills. You know, companies have been forced to accelerate the adoption of digital technologies and not just big ones. I mean, even the corner pub or a restaurant had to go to curbside pickup, you know, or to go ordering in order to survive and they needed digital systems. So up and down the chain, you know, the skills have changed. And, you know, obviously, if higher ed wants to play any role in preparing either the next generation of citizens and workers or help the current workforce get back to work or reskill for how their jobs have changed, then we certainly do need to attend to what’s required. And quite frankly, it’s unlikely that it’s going to be a full three- or four-year undergraduate or even a full graduate degree, at least not to start.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah. And so you’ve obviously just referenced this sort of huge upheaval to the workplace and demand for different jobs. Do you think that is the key thing that’s driving demand for micro-credentials or are there other major drivers? And who do you see these new forms of education training being designed for?

Kemi Jona: I see the shift as predating the pandemic. Certainly, a colleague of mine, Sean Gallagher at Northeastern back in 2016, wrote a book on the future called The Future of University Credentials. And so, you know, he’s certainly been looking at this for at least five years now. But certainly the pandemic has acted to accelerate it. Look, I think the shift is very consistent, Miranda, with the shift in other fields. You know, we no longer, as consumers, are forced to buy an entire album. We can just go and buy a track or listen to a track on Spotify without the rest of the album. You know, we can stream TV shows or series on demand whenever we want rather than sitting around waiting for eight o’clock to roll around and that sort of thing. So I think it’s part and parcel of a shift towards consumer empowerment and markets and technologies, figuring out how to respond to that. And certainly the emergence of platforms like Coursera or edX or FutureLearn have made those kinds of resources, those smaller learning resources much more broadly accessible.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, so it’s sort of higher education on demand increasingly. As you’ve just said, there are, and this has been brought up by a number of people we’ve spoken to, fortunately, the demand for these micro-credentials and more flexible forms of learning are being matched in a way by the ability to provide it due to advancing technology, third-party providers, some of you just referenced, and so on. But for a university to really kind of develop a comprehensive program of micro-credentials, what does this kind of require on a practical level? And I’m talking about things like staffing and training and developing the very curriculums themselves that need to be sort of broken down. Can you talk us through that process a little bit?

Kemi Jona: Absolutely. I mean, I think first and foremost, any university or faculty that’s going to embark on a journey towards offering shorter form, whether we call it micro-credentials or certificates or really anything smaller than a full degree has to be based in a customer-centric focus, a student or learner-centric mindset. And frankly, that’s been really the Achilles heel of higher ed, you know, for decades, if not centuries, is sort of thinking that we know best and we’re going to just tell the learners, you know, what’s best. And, you know, the dirty secret, which is now obviously not such a secret, is that it was really what’s best for the faculty and the university, not what’s best for the learner. And, you know, that moment of reckoning, you know, has arrived and is long past. So if there is a true commitment towards listening to the voice of the customer, the voice of the learner, you know, the marketplace in terms of what employers are requesting or demanding of the graduates or of lifelong learners, adult learners, then, you know, I think it’s quite possible to go on a journey like this. And really it isn’t, I would argue, Miranda, not so much building a parallel universe of micro-credentials that are separate and apart from the core curriculum. I think that the most productive strategy is what we call sort of stackable credentials, right? Sort of thinking about how a curriculum might be effectively unbundled into smaller pieces that can be taken individually if that’s all a learner wanted, let’s say to do some data analytics in order to be relevant to the job, but could in fact, if taken together, be assembled into a larger credential, perhaps even a full, let’s say, master’s degree or even an undergraduate degree. So, you know, the ones that are being most successfully implemented don’t build out an entirely separate operations, although certainly, you know, you need to be able to market those individual credentials or certificates through separate channels than typically your full degrees.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah. And so if you, as you say, it doesn’t necessarily need to be viewed as a separate entity and should really be kind of emanating from what is already being done within universities. Equally, who do you think should be involved? Because we’ve already kind of talked about the strong driver coming from industry and employers. We know there are third-party providers who work with institutions to kind of make accessible short courses and micro-credentials and MOOCs and so on. So, do you see this as a sort of collaboration between institutions and many other parties? Who, as I say, who do you think are the kind of key players in this?

Kemi Jona: Certainly, I think there are competencies or abilities that often traditionally university may be lacking in terms of putting together these sort of digital offerings. And they’re largely digital, they don’t have to be in terms of creating them, the instructional designers, videographers, the whole bit that goes into creating high-quality offerings. Certainly, the marketing and enrollment, you may be targeting audiences that are new and unfamiliar. You know, most universities will target, let’s say, 17, 18-year-olds coming into school. And now you’re talking about mid-career adults. It’s a very different audience. So, partnering with either in-house experts who know how to do this or third parties as well. And as I suggested, Miranda, having a strong voice of the employer community is essential. I think a great example of that, for example, Northeastern has a campus in London, the New College of Humanities, and we’ve launched degree apprenticeships there. And so the apprenticeship standards already represent a model of asking a committee of employers to define what’s needed amongst their workers. And it’s a nice example of how that could work.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah. Yeah. And then, I mean, bearing that in mind, where do you see them, these courses fitting into the wider university curriculum strategy? Is it, as you say, just do you see the curriculum kind of remaining the same, but these being a different form of presenting it, if you like, because that’s sort of what we referenced previously. Or do you think they could lead to kind of the development of whole new courses?

Kemi Jona: No, I think you’re absolutely onto something, Miranda. I mean, look, the best advice that I can give, you know, for those considering creating a micro-credential is whether or not it’s resume worthy. In other words, would somebody find value in putting it on their CV or their resume or on their LinkedIn profile? Because if the answer is no, then it really begs the question: why are you doing it? Right. So, does it have value to the learner in the labor market? And does it have value to employers who are looking to audition talent and to make hiring decisions? And if you can’t answer yes to that, then you’re probably barking up the wrong tree. So, to answer your question, I think developing these micro-credentials and asking the question: is it resume worthy? Is it adding value to learners or employers? Is a way to kind of refresh or align curriculum with what’s most needed in the marketplace. And of course, this is probably most relevant to professional fields. I’m not talking about philosophy or liberal arts where being market relevant is a bit less clear-cut.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, of course. And arguably, I’m sure it is indeed the case that universities are regularly reviewing their curriculums across the board, or certainly one would assume that’s what should be happening anyway.

Kemi Jona: I would certainly hope so, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Miranda Prynne: One thing to sort of bring up, because I’m interested to get your thoughts, is that there is some skepticism from various corners about the value of short courses, micro-credentials, and also concerns that they are going to become a sort of cash cow essentially for institutions. Do you think there’s any kind of justification for that claim? And if not, how could universities debunk that stigma?

Kemi Jona: Well, yeah, I guess the question is: who’s worried about it being a cash cow? I mean, certainly universities could use diverse sources of revenue in order to sort of navigate the pandemic and post-pandemic period and and to remain a relevant institution. So, certainly, if the criticism is universities are trying to offer things that are in demand at the price point that people are willing to buy, then that seems hardly worthy of criticism because that’s pretty much how the rest of the economy works. So, and again, if we stick to the advice I shared earlier, which is, is it resume worthy? Meaning, do people find value in it enough to put it on their CV or their job application, then I would argue it’s not a cash cow in the sense that you’re selling something that has no real value. But of course, you know, there can always be bad actors. And what I do think is worthy of concern is as we get into this era of micro-credential proliferation, right, it will become a very, or it probably already has become a very much more crowded marketplace where it’s going to be increasingly difficult for consumers, that is the learners, to sort out what’s good and what’s bad, what’s valuable and what’s not, right? So eventually, I think we will have to see some kind of reckoning around this sort of explosion of micro-credentials. And I suspect that in the long run, trusted brands like universities will be seen as, you know, signals of quality again, if they don’t squander that.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, of course. I mean, that’s it, isn’t it? One needs sort of quality control or some kind of way of assessing without kind of insider knowledge, as it were. We need to wrap up, unfortunately, because we’re almost out of time. So I just wanted to ask one last question, which was on briefly, if that’s possible. What other models or ways of delivering lifelong learning you think could be really effective looking ahead?

Kemi Jona: Sure. I mean, again, I’ll go back to this notion of stackability, Miranda, you know, where the best of both worlds is to allow learners to choose these smaller bite sizes, right? If I want to get from London to Edinburgh or London to Manchester, but the only train available is all the way to Edinburgh, you know, that doesn’t really help me that much, right? And so the ability to make those choices and then maybe decide later that I actually do want to continue on from Manchester to Edinburgh later, you know, and finish my credential, turn it into something bigger, I think is really the, you know, best path forward for this kind of effort because it does allow the best of both worlds for learners and frankly for the university.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, so really it’s about widening choice and creating flexibility. So people can kind of fit the learning or complete it in ways that suit them. Well, look, thank you. Thank you so much for chatting to us today, Kemi. That’s been fascinating to get your insight on this as someone who I know has been working on it for longer than most, I would imagine. It’s become a sort of buzzword recently, but as you say, it’s not actually new. But it’s great to get your insight. And we hope to speak to you again soon on THE Campus.

Kemi Jona: Thank you. Thank you so much, Miranda. It’s been a pleasure being here.

Sara Custer: So I think the biggest takeaway for me from these conversations, Miranda, is just that quality needs to be really at the center of all of this stuff, no matter if universities are doing it because they’re responding to demand or because they see it’s a lucrative opportunity for them, and if they are outsourcing their curriculum development or if they’re partnering with a company to provide some sort of professional development, that, as Tim suggested, that that advice and guidance to students absolutely needs to be there and absolutely needs to go alongside any of these courses that they’re offering, whether they’re credit-bearing or not, to make sure that students are the most informed for the decisions that they’re making about their education.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, absolutely. I think students obviously sit at the heart of this.

Miranda Prynne: And for anyone listening who wants to read around this subject of lifelong learning, get advice on how best to approach kind of planning for micro-credentials and other sort of strategies for kind of technology enhanced learning and new modes of learning. We have an absolute wealth of advice on THE Campus from academics and higher education professionals all over the world. So do go and check it out. That is at timeshighereducation.com/campus.

Sara Custer: Thanks so much to Kemi and Tim for giving us their time for very interesting interviews and thank you to all of you for listening. If you would like to suggest any topics that you would like to hear on the podcast, you can get in touch with me, sara.custer@timeshighereducation.com. Thank you for your time.

Miranda Prynne: Thanks very much. We’ll see you next time. Bye.

Sara Custer: Bye.

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