Microcredentials in HE (webinar) – David Hopkins / Education & Leadership

Earlier this week, I attended the Digital Learning Institute’s webinar ‘Micro-credential Design Trends in Higher Education‘ with guest presenter Stuart Allen from the University of St Andrews.

Watch the full webinar recording via Digital Learning Institute here, but I wanted to share some notes and thoughts from the webinar as they happened for me.

I want to start by saying this webinar, and the work that Stuart has been doing at St Andrews, has brought together so much of my work over the years into one, structured and well-presented body of work that encapsulates the current state of microcredentials, how you get started on them, and all things a typical university needs to consider before being able to deliver it’s first (or tenth) one. Perhaps the webinar should have been called “Everything you wanted to know about Microcredentials (but were afraid to ask).“

Rather than discussing future trends or speculative innovation, Stuart spent the session exploring the practical questions institutions encounter when they move from talking about microcredentials to actually building them, and the infrastructure needed to make that happen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of those questions have very little to do with technology and more to do with the attitude that surrounds the decision to take this direction.

Step 1: Decide what you mean by “microcredential”

One of the biggest challenges facing the sector is that the term is not universally recognised or used the same. Some institutions use it to describe short courses. Others mean digitally badged learning. Others mean CPD. Others mean credit-bearing modules. An early decision at St Andrews was that their microcredentials would be:

• Assessed
• Credit-bearing
• Stackable
• Aligned to labour market needs

That decision helped to shape every decision that followed.

I’ve seen this happen elsewhere, where a ‘great idea’ for a new course isn’t given a proper and thorough market analysis before being given the green light; what sounds great and could be a winner may not be the same thing the market wants or needs. If you want to create a master’s degree in a particular subject, are you solving a real skills gap, or simply delivering something because the institution finds it interesting?

Step 2: Decide whether credit matters

This felt like the most important takeaway of the entire session. According to Stuart, the moment you decide a microcredential carries academic credit, everything changes. Suddenly, you’re dealing with more than just the thought of designing and delivering an online course. You’ll need:

• Quality assurance
• Assessment regulations
• Exam boards
• External examiners
• Student records
• Progression routes
• Institutional policy

The decision about ‘for-credit’ or ‘not-for-credit’ isn’t simply an academic one. It’s an operational one.

Step 3: Don’t let stackability consume every conversation

One observation I found particularly interesting was Stuart’s comment that perhaps only a small percentage of learners will ever stack microcredentials into a larger qualification. Yet stackability occupied the vast majority of institutional discussions. I’m not sure about the data, if it even exists, but outside of this EdTech community and sector, do ‘learners’ even know what a stackable credential is? Does the average person looking for a new learning opportunity care whether something is stackable, or do they simply want a course that helps them achieve their goal?

That feels familiar: universities often spend enormous amounts of time debating edge cases while the primary learner journey receives less attention. Stackability matters. But making the first microcredential work probably matters more.

Step 4: Treat systems as a strategic decision

The session reinforced a lesson that applies far beyond microcredentials: systems should support the model, not define it. St Andrews chose to use their existing LMS, student record system, quality and registration processes rather than creating entirely new pathways.

The guiding question then became “what’s the path of least resistance?” Not because it was the final destination, but because it was the quickest way to get started, whilst making sure the question (and answers) remained relevant and achievable.

Step 5: Build policy before you build content

One of the strongest messages from the webinar was that policy work cannot be left until later. When planning for what a microcredential is or should be, the questions will quickly focus on areas of institutional governance, like admissions, assessment, resubmissions, leave of absence, progression, credit transfer and, as mentioned before, stackability.

Without a clear framework, every new microcredential becomes a separate debate, making the process far longer and more complicated than it needs to be.

Step 6: Resource it

This was perhaps the most refreshing part of the discussion, that too often universities underestimate the effort required because they compare a microcredential to a module rather than comparing it to the creation of a new educational product.

I’ve been saying for years that a venture like this, or MOOCs or fully online courses, is not just a ‘small’ extension of an existing team. You need dedicated staff for this (not just academics, but admin, EdTech, marketing, management, etc), and you need this experience and expertise from the start. You can build a team, and it can develop through the shared experience of ‘doing it’, but you need a core team to start it that has the required experience and expertise.

Stuart was clear that microcredentials cannot be built through goodwill and spare time. If an institution is serious about offering them, it needs to invest in meaningful and deliberate academic time, learning design support, quality assurance, administration, marketing, and ongoing delivery (including maintenance) activity.

The challenge isn’t simply creating the first microcredential. It’s creating a model that remains scalable and sustainable.

The question behind every other question

Perhaps my favourite anecdote from the session was the question:

“Can microcredential students get married in the university chapel?”

On the surface, it sounded amusing and a question from left field, but behind it sat a series of genuinely important institutional questions:

• Are these learners or students? (and the need to define the difference between them; for me, a learner is someone learning content from this institution – think MOOC – whereas a student is a fully-paid-up campus or online student with an IT account and an ID card)
• What status do they have? (see above; is it access to just the course content or the full campus and institutional features, incl. the library, the health centre, IT, etc)
• What rights do they have? (see above)
• How do they relate to and are included in the wider university? (see above)

It’s a reminder that universities rarely debate systems and processes in isolation. They debate identity, culture and tradition too.

In the context of St Andrew’s, only graduating students can get married in the university chapel. Is someone completing a ‘short’ microcredential considered a graduating student? And this needs to be a full credit-bearing course, not an exit award like a PG Cert. A very important distinction, and a simple but odd question that has helped to unravel something far bigger and more central to understanding the status of the learner/student.

Final thoughts

The biggest lesson I took away wasn’t about microcredentials; it was about implementation. Most universities already have most or all the technology, expertise and processes needed to start. The challenge is often agreeing on definitions, creating sensible guardrails and accepting that the first version doesn’t need to solve every problem.

The core takeaway I hope the other attendees took from the session was that very little of the discussion needs to focus on technology. The challenge is agreeing on a definition for microcredentials, governance, quality assurance, admissions, student status, funding, systems and resourcing. In other words, the barriers to microcredentials are rarely technical. They’re organisational.

As Stuart repeatedly suggested throughout the session, the goal isn’t perfection. The goal is to get started.

Photo by RoonZ nl on Unsplash

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