Microcredentials and Credit Hours
Microcredentials have been on my radar for a while, and the article ‘Rethinking Credit Hours and Degrees’ by James Thelen has brought it to the fore again.
Without teaching you to suck eggs the established norm is that, for example, a student needs 180 credits to graduate with a master’s degree. Each module within the degree structure is typically 15 credits, the student ‘earning’ this when they complete and pass the end-of-module assessment. There will be a dissertation or project, usually 30 or 60 credits, determining how many 15-credit modules are needed to complete the 180 credits required to graduate.
Microcredentials have been described as ‘part-module’ or ‘half-module’ learning; the learner completes a couple of these, gains the evidence needed and takes it to a sympathetic degree provider (‘Accredited Prior Learning’ – APL) and gains entry to their degree, sometimes this credit can be used as evidence of mapped learning against one or more modules.
But within all this is the concept of the ‘study hour’. The 15-credit module is assigned an arbitrary value of 150 hours of study. But this doesn’t necessarily map onto microcredentials, where the size and shape will differ depending on the producer, requirement of the subject, skills or topic, etc.
While I don’t see microcredentials solely being a route into degree study, I see their advantage as a viable alternative to full- or part-time university study, a skills-based alternative to academic study, and a valuable route to on-the-job training for those who want or need it. There is scope for both types of orientation for microcredentials – it’s not only about HE you know.
(Perhaps, while we’re at it, we can come up with something shorter than ‘microcredential’? It’s annoying to type it, and spellcheck doesn’t like it unless we break it apart to micro credential, or hyphenate it to micro-credential? Higher Education loves an acronym, so why not one here?)
The college degree could give way to alternatives, as educational foundations, colleges and universities, and nonprofit organizations team up with businesses to explore and pilot degree alternatives such as microcredentials. Microcredentials, which can be obtained much more quickly than traditional degrees, are digital records that certify an individual’s competency with a particular skill or set of skills. They can be earned at any time and stacked with other microcredentials to demonstrate readiness for particular jobs.
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Credit hours. Semesters. Degrees. Improving them has proven a challenge, and replacing them is likely to be even harder. Even if warranted, an evolution from time-based credit hours and degrees to competency-based learning could be chaotic.
But work on that evolution is nevertheless underway, and it has the potential to bring the scale and pace of innovation in higher education more in line with society and learner needs now and into the future. A great deal of commitment, planning, creativity, assessment, funding, political will and buy-in from all stakeholders will be necessary for its success.
‘Rethinking Credit Hours and Degrees’ by James Thelen
Despite this, if you search for any online course the metric of choice you will see is the number of hours of study needed. FutureLearn states hours per week, and how many weeks, Coursera shows the number of hours to complete, EdX also shows study hours per week and the duration in weeks. These may be used to indicate the commitment needed from the student (I know I’ve often put in way more hours when completing a MOOC before) but it’s also an indication of effort. If only there was a better way.
Update – since I wrote the above I’ve been thinking about the credit/study hours. My objection to it, as a metric, is that it becomes a target. Rather than do what they can. a learner may do more to fill the hours or less because they’ve done too much already. The aim will be the hours required rather than the knowledge. Perhaps it’s just the way the study hours are presented – what if it was ‘recommended study hours’, less of an instruction and more of a guide?
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