Rethinking Microcredentials

It feels like another life but I used to be all-in for microcredentials not so long ago.

That was the effect of Australia for me. The Australian national framework and the buzz around Microcredentials converted me. I loved its flexibility and the focus on practical stuff. In the UK, where a Masters could be achieved through negotiated learning, it is possible to build a course as close to practical life and work as possible. And, yet, not many people can afford multi-year commitment that such postgrad degrees offer. Microcredentials were that sweet everything - short, flexible, close to real-life and daily work, and in theory, stackable, to make a full qualification!

But the standard formula was not exciting enough. Work needed to be team-based and collaborative, otherwise it was to become academic and make-believe. And, therefore, the assessment was meant to be complex. I saw the MCs which are meant to be practical but ended up in reflective essays marked by academic mentors - that was not how learning at work meant to happen. Reflection is indeed the hallmark of a professional, but if all learning is meant to be summarised in reflective essays, punctuation, in time, was destinted to trump relevance. 

Therefore, I went out to create something different: Experiential Micro-credentials (XPMC), I called it. I used to joke that it is a tautology, as MCs are supposed to be experiential. But they were not: The XPMC was supposed to battle the inherent tendencies of the Microcredentials to become overtly academic. It was built around Agile approach - with its own rituals and artefacts. It made things manageable, transparent and tangible, making the learners complete a task every two weeks. 

Though this experience, though, I came to see the real limits of microcredentials. First, the market: We were trying this in India, which is a classic 'market for lemons' in Education. When I work in China, I am careful because anything good is likely to be copied and improved upon. In India, it is the opposite: Anything one did would be mindlessly shorn of substance and turned into a useless commodity, which duly happened to what I tried to do. It was a bad choice to market innovative education.

Second, the pricing. Microcredentials are meant to be cheap - at least that's what people think they ought to be. On the other hand, team-based projects are expensive to run, compared to simple stuff which can be completed by writing a short reflective piece. There was no scalability in team- and project-based learning, and real-life employer engagement made it even more expensive. I used to joke that one doesn't build a business class for Ryanair: I ended up doing exactly that!

Therefore, I became a Micro-crendential sceptic, until about now. I am now discovering them in a new avatar. I am bowing down to the demands of the market - MCs are expected to be cheap, easy and flexible - and yet, not giving up on the ambition to build a truly practice-oriented learning experience. In the hierarchy of things that I wish to do now, I want to use Microcredentials where it really belongs - a set of short (2 to 4 weeks), activity oriented 'courses', which are validated and certified by the employers. So far, our work focused on building these around the Capabilities framework and various aspects of it, and our aspiration is to train an AI agent to be the guide for students completing these micro-experiences. I am aware of the limits of the AI agents but I believe these introductory bits are simple and mechanistic enough to be supported by them. So, yes, I am back to cheap and short, but haven't given up my quest to make Microcredentials meaningful.