Recap: The OpenLearning Micro-credential Symposium 2022

Micro-credentials: Connecting Education and The Future of Work was successfully held on the 17th of November 2022. It focused on the benefits and challenges of micro-credentials and delved into a discussion on public-private partnerships to future fit education across a spectrum of measures, including policy, access, programmes, and outreach. 

Below, we share a few quotes from the event. Readers are welcome to join the official symposium course to view each session, interact with other participants, and expand the conversation on each topic.

👉 Click here to join the official symposium course.

Why Micro-Credentials Matter

“Young people are better educated than ever before, but are still struggling with unemployment and underemployment. In effect, their skills and capabilities are not being fully utilized in the workforce. This is where we see lifelong learning, particularly micro-credentials, as a solution.

Micro-credentials bring together employers, education providers, policy makers, and lifelong learners to provide an opportunity for people to learn new skills and gain formal recognition for them. One of the most exciting opportunities for micro-credentials is for people to have a portfolio of learning that can be showcased to potential employers, containing the artifacts of learning, projects, soft skills, and collaboration from each course.”

Adam Brimo - Chief Executive Officer and Founder, OpenLearning

Image: The changing nature of work requires re-skilling and up-skilling throughout life. 

👉 Watch the full session in the official symposium course: Why Micro-credentials Matter

The Rise of Micro-credentials: Are We Leading or Are We Being Led?

“We need to find a way to show up where people are, listen deeply to the needs they express, and build training opportunities empathetically around them—rather than asking them to work around us. That’s the power of micro-credentials: short learning experiences that help learners build a sense of efficacy, of going to the next step, and the next step, and the next step.”

Donald Tracy - Director, Corporate & Community Education, Continuing Education Division, Austin Community College

“How do we make sure we’re speaking the same language? It’s absolutely essential for academia and industry to work together to map learning outcomes to skills taxonomies. We need pedagogical affordances like portfolios, social learning, and personalisation at scale. This is where the edtech platform comes in.” 

Dr Shazia K Jan - Academic Director, OpenLearning

“Micro-credentials have a huge range — they could be just a few hours of learning, or weeks; they could offer credits, or no credits; they could be validated by universities, or not. It would be nice to think that there’s a way of having a framework they can be ranked on. Studies would be useful: for example, comparing different frameworks and finding the commonalities to form a worldwide framework for micro-credentials.”

Dr Amanda O'Shea - Lecturer in Micro-credentials, The Open University

👉 Watch the full session in the official symposium course: The Rise of Micro-credentials: Are We Leading or Are We Being Led?

Talent Recruitment, Retention and Upskilling Strategies

“Employers cannot see the full picture nor the benefits of micro-credentials without skills mapping. Talent can be repositioned and upskilled or re-skilled where needed, increasing loyalty and reducing turnover. There’s so much more to micro-credentials than just the digital credential. It is a more flexible and open way of delivery. Many are online and self-paced, which promotes work-life balance for working people and improves productivity for employers.”

Dr Hazman Shah Abdullah - Quality Assurance Consultant, Former Deputy CEO of Malaysia Qualifications Agency

“We don’t teach change; we teach for change. Automation is changing business models. We are shifting from long-time degrees towards being able to be skilled in multiple disciplines in a short time frame. Leaders must be informed by data, do a mapping exercise, reduce the talent blind spots, and allow mobility. For this, emotional intelligence and data literacy will be very important.”

Jagmohan Singh - Campus Director, Center of Applied Data Science

“The skills needed have changed, making it difficult to identify the right person for each job. It’s not just about learning new skills, but also transferring skills from one context to another. We need to think beyond what someone can do at present, but also think about how we can support them to mix-and-match the skills that they need—micro-credentials could be useful for this.” 

Dr Nantana Taptamat - Career Development Learning Designer, The University of Queensland

“I envision a future where digital portfolios and badges lead to career growth. Micro-credentials are one of the solutions. We are so busy with our lives—as a mom, a wife, a student, and a business person, I’m multi-tasking every day. But if I can just attend one or two courses per week, that will be good enough for me to upskill myself.”

Anita Adnan - Founder, Doctorate Support Group

👉 Watch the full session in the official symposium course: Talent Recruitment, Retention and Upskilling Strategies

Connecting Education & The Future of Work for Indonesia

A satellite Indonesian panel discussion was held on the role of micro-credentials in nurturing Indonesian talents to adapt to market & future needs. Speakers from the University of Indonesia, Kampus Merdeka, Lazada, Mondelez International, and Mitra Rencana Edukasi highlighted the following:

• Soft skills such as research and communication, as well as financial, digital, technology, & entrepreneurship skills are among the skills that fresh graduates need to face the jobs of tomorrow.
• Industry players are already conducting hybrid training within their respective departments to reduce the capacity gap of existing employees.
• Robust technology and digital skills are needed to create more opportunities for upskilling.
• The quality of education could be improved by using emotional and social learning approaches.

👉 Watch the full session in the official symposium course: Connecting Education & The Future of Work for Indonesia

Explore the rest of the symposium

The quotes shared above are a snippet of the wide-ranging conversations we had during the symposium. To access all of the sessions, case studies, demonstrations, and ideas discussed, visit the official website or join the official symposium course.