Stand Out in the Job Market - The Benefits of Microcredentials [Part 1]

Discover how microcredentials can give you a competitive edge in today's job market. In this episode, we explore the benefits of microcredentialing, how it helps you gain job-ready skills, and why it’s a flexible option for students and professionals. UMBC's Digital Credentialing initiative offers cutting-edge microcredentials designed to showcase specific competencies and accomplishments that employers value. Whether you're looking to upskill, switch careers, or enhance your resume, UMBC’s microcredentials provide a targeted approach to learning that meets the demands of today’s workforce. Tune in to learn how UMBC's microcredentials can fast-track your career success! 

Access Part 2 of this conversation here: https://youtu.be/Cas3UMYvEp4

Learn more about UMBC here: https://badges.umbc.edu/

Transcript

Dennise Cardona  0:00  

Hello and welcome to this episode of UMBC's MIc'd Up podcast. My name is Dennise Cardona from the Office of Professional Programs here at UMBC. I am here with a very special guest our very own Colin Sullivan. He is a program director for Digital Credential Innovation in the Division of Professional Studies. Welcome Colin. It is great to have you here.

Collin Sullivan  0:20  

Thanks for having me.

Dennise Cardona  0:21  

So we're going to talk about this whole big hot topic of badges, micro credentialing and things of that sort, because there's a lot of interest in that, and I know that we have some pretty cool things going on right now at UMBC. And so let's just jump right into first of all your background as it pertains to this whole micro credentialing world. Can you give us a little bit of what path you took to get to where you are right now?

Collin Sullivan  0:48  

Yeah, so I professionally started off in instructional technology and supporting online learning and supporting our use of our Blackboard learning management system, and that's really where I have been my whole life. But I have this joke that I often talk about when I was like, growing up, my grandfather sent the error message on the computer to be Colin. Don't do that. And so I've always been involved with technology. Always loved computers and from a very young age and loved technology in school. So that's really how I eventually learned that, oh, technology in school, that could be a career, and that's how I ended up over in the Blackboard World and supporting instructional technology. But I would say about, probably, gosh, seven, eight years ago, I think UMBC really got interested in digital credentialing. We saw that a national landscape digital credentialing really did take off with online practitioners, as there were these more massively open online courses, or MOOCs for really taking advantage of offering badges and digital credentials. So it really made sense at that time for instructional technology to really take the lead with our badging initiative. So I got involved in that work when we started it here fairly early on, and we just continue to grow and grow the program. And I think maybe two years ago at this point, we really had this aha moment of we've been doing this thing for several years now, but this is going to take off, and we really want to be even more mindful and even more 

strategic about how we're doing digital credentialing. And it was at that time that I moved over from instructional technology, over in to the Division of Professional Studies, so that we could start thinking about, What could this mean in continuing education, What could this mean in professional programs and really having a broader strategy, rather than this initiative living just solely out of Central it?

Dennise Cardona  2:56  

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. There are people here on the show listening who may not even know what micro credentialing really involves. What it is. Could you talk a little bit about what micro credentialing is, and how does it differ from, say, traditional degrees or certifications?

Collin Sullivan  3:14  

Yeah, and I've already said what I feel like. I've already said badge and micro credential interchangeably, so I'm gonna, I'll talk about that too. So I think, Well, I think a lot of things on this topic, but first I want to talk about what the purpose of a micro credential really is. I think a lot of people are familiar with macro credentials, right? I think people are familiar with what I call capital C certificates, your bachelor's degree, your master's degree, a doctorate. And again, in my world, those are the macro credentials. Those are things that have these 30, 60, 90, 120 traditional credit hours associated with completing them. And they are wonderful experiences, right? We know that we have many jobs that require you to have those types of credentials, right? What micro credentials do is, instead of focusing on these big programs, we're focusing on the competency, the knowledge, the skill, the ability, so that we're really deconstructing. What does this mean, right? Like, okay, I understand conceptually that you have an Information Systems Bachelor of Science degree from UMBC, but what if we start to really break that down? What were your competencies? What are your knowledge skills and abilities? Right? Because even if you take an Information Systems degree here at UMBC, which I highly recommend as a graduate of you can have some difference between students, right? You think about the different electives that students may take. You may think about the different general education requirements students might take, right? So there are different even different paths that students take to get to their undergraduate degree. Right? What micro credentials are really doing is saying, Okay, let's detail that, right? Let's detail and acknowledge what those competencies are in a way that is understandable, most importantly, to the learner, right? If I look back at my transcript, even now, I may not exactly remember what English 393 was, right? But if I can say that I actually learned about technical writing and how to prepare a brief and how to summarize and prepare a presentation, those are niche competencies that are going to help me as I'm interviewing, as I'm preparing for graduate school. All that's really helpful stuff for me as an individual. It's also really helpful for, say, an employer who, again, sees so many transcripts and sees so many different courses that there may be an English 393 from UMBC, there may be an English 393 at College Park, there may be an English 393 at Towson, and they all may be just a little bit different. But if we can specifically say this is what you our learners are taking away from this experience. It's going to help employers again, or whoever is looking at individuals from UMBC, say, Oh, I know exactly what they accomplish, and we can do that and leverage that through micro credential. So I really think that that's the benefit of micro credentials, is that we're really demystifying what our learners are learning in our spaces, and we're really demystifying what our macro credentials are. But on the other hand, we also have tons of experiences that aren't credentialed at all right. We have tons of applied learning experiences. We have tons of co curricular experiences that up until this point, we haven't had an amazing institutional way to acknowledge the real work that our Start students and learners are meaningfully acquiring their competencies that they're acquiring. So we can do that through a micro credential. Now, right? Because maybe it's not a full course, maybe it's not anything else in particular, but we're able to acknowledge their work and their achievements through a micro credential. So really, the micro credentials are really versatile and what we can do, but it always comes back to what are the knowledge skills and abilities that we can acknowledge?

Dennise Cardona  7:33  

I love that. And one of the things that when you were saying all of this is something that was brought to my mind, is it's really good for people who say you don't really know if you like the field of cybersecurity, and maybe you're not sure if you're actually meant for that. And then maybe by taking a micro credential to get that, to get a certain knowledge skill or ability, you're able to then see, hey, I really do like this, and I really, I do get this and I can do this, and maybe it can bridge to a formal degree, a macro credential, at some point or at the same breath. Maybe it's you've had, you have your master's degree, maybe you have your PhD, maybe you have your bachelor's. And now you just need some you need some very fine tuned skills, knowledge and abilities that are out there. You see them out there and you don't quite have them from your macro degree credential, and then this is your way of being able to bridge that gap in that.

Collin Sullivan  8:33  

Absolutely, I think your comments made me think of two things wholeheartedly agree. The first thing is thinking about our undergraduate students and getting competencies that are completely different than their macro credential, right? So I'm thinking about our students that are in our College of Engineering and Information Technology. We actually know that employers are looking for students and graduates from our College of Engineering and Information Technology with some of these more durable skills, right? How do you communicate, how do you critically think? How do you process? How do you work in a team? Right? We know that those are skills that employers are looking for, and frankly, are just good skills to have to be a more holistic and round person, right? Conversely, we know that our students and our graduates from, say, our College of Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences, they're looking for more technical skills as they start to go into the workforce. How do you use Excel? How do you use different software to be more competent in your position. So I'm not suggesting that we have our students complete a whole second bachelor's degree in a completely different field, right? But what's that skill that they could acquire and be a more marketable individual have? Some of that in their tool belt as they start applying and thinking about whatever is next in life and demonstrate that they have this kind of unique skill set, right, not just whatever their kind of background measure of study is, right? So I'm thinking how we can use micro credentials to really support our students to be that holistic candidate and exactly what you were talking about on the second thing that I'm thinking about is, I think and hope that we are living in a time of a culture shift with how institutions, employers and people look at macro credentials later in life, and thinking about how we live in a time where I think that we're realizing that we are over credentialing, right, that maybe there's this job that you don't actually need a second master's degree for right? Maybe you don't need a completely different professional degree, but again, maybe you just need a competency. Maybe you need to demonstrate that you have leadership so that you can become a manager, right? That doesn't mean that you get a whole separate master's degree or you get a whole second certificate, but what's that competency that will help you. And so let's make that a little more nimble and more digestible than a whole new program. And again, conversely, later in life, if you have a moment of I want to complete career change, it's going back to the well, what are the transferable skills from your current position, and what is the new knowledge that you're going to need instead of getting a whole new degree, right? What is the particular competency that will help you and make you excel in that new position?

Dennise Cardona  11:50  

That makes total sense. Thank you for explaining it like that. Now I understand that micro credentialing can range from different experiences. So could you explain the taxonomy that you've implemented to help define and categorize these various experiences?

Collin Sullivan  12:07  

Yeah, so this is one of my favorite things to talk about, because we at UMBC, we've been doing micro credentialing and digital badging work for a long time now, and one of the things that we reflected on and have changed since we began this work was that we really do try to work with as many faculty and staff to create as many micro credentials as possible. And we're doing that because we want to recognize all these competencies and all these experiences, and we want to document them, and we want to let earners of these micro credentials have agency with their competency again, for whatever's next in life. One of the challenges, though, is we would create a micro credential because you, Denise attended a one hour long webinar, just, just fine, right? You may have gotten a lot out of that one hour webinar. You may have new insights and new thoughts and new perspectives because you attended that webinar, but we would also create badges and micro credentials because you participated in a full 15 week experience. Maybe it was an internship. Maybe you were doing 10 to 15 hours a week at that internship. Maybe you were submitting a reflection every week. Maybe you were submitting a time card, and then maybe you made some kind of E portfolio or digital story at the end of that experience, and we'd issue you a micro credential in a badge. Those two things, the one hour webinar versus this 15 week long intensive internship are so dissimilar, right? There's very little overlap into what is the same, right and the outcome that someone's going to have from participating in the kind of aha moments, or whatever you may call them, so institutionally, and for earners and micro credential. Saying that these are both quote, unquote badges isn't helpful, right? Because we shouldn't be conflating dislike and dissimilar experiences. So that kind of conversation is where the taxonomy came from. Saying, Okay, let's start to categorize where these different experiences come from. So the taxonomy that we've created, which was written by one of our former colleagues, Sherry Braxton, who we have since adapted largely from it. I call this taxonomy the Rosetta Stone between the Academy and the workforce, because that's really how micro credentials are meant to sing. Is able to is being able to recognize what we do at a university, but also speak a language that makes sense to any external stakeholder, right, including employers. So we're. We have this taxonomy. We have an engagement micro credential, and that is exactly what it sounds like you're engaging with something or an events or a webinar, right? So we have that engagement micro credential, and that's really our lowest level type of micro credential. We have three other types of micro credentials, knowledge, proficiency and mastery. And I have this slide that says visual that shows, on one hand, it is plumes, provides learning outcomes, and then on the other side, it's the Dreyfus model for skill and acquisition. You can see how this maps to the learning outcomes that we work with faculty and staff to design their program, their course, whatever it may be, we have the learning outcomes, but then we also have whether it's a knowledge skill or an ability, and again, it maps to these micro credentials. When I'm working with faculty and staff, we really do look at the learning outcomes, and we look at the assessment say, okay, because most of your learning outcomes are going to be about knowledge and remembering something. This is going to be a knowledge badge, right? Versus that 15 week long internship I was describing, where you're going to be creating some kind of digital story at the end, that's probably going to be a mastery badge, right? You're showing a higher order of thinking, and you're also demonstrating an ability to create something because you went through this experience. So now we have words that help us to distinguish the different types of learning and the different types of activities that we can acknowledge through a micro credential, right? The fifth type of badge, micro credential, the type of micro credential that we all see, I say badge and micro credential interchangeably, and just so that you have those, in case you're interested, letter of the law. Letter of the law is that a badge is the visual you see on a computer screen. So the pretty colors that light up on your computer screen, the micro credential is really what we're interested in. The micro credential is the recognition of the competency from any learning experience. So with that said, we do have a fifth type of micro credential. We call that the meta micro credential. We firmly believe that micro credentials are how we can walk our talk with lifelong learning, right? We institutionally UMBC. We love lifelong learning. But what does this actually mean? What does this actually look like? And again, going back to the maybe you don't need to complete a full master screen reader. Maybe you don't need a full whatever. You can look at this micro credential because it's the right competency right now, at this right time, right so we can use micro credentials as these tools for lifelong learning. But with that being said, we still want learners to think about how do these competencies interact with one another? How can they what story do these competencies tell when they're put together? So that is what a meta micro credential does. We have a it's a symbolic recognition that you've completed a pathway, that you have earned four or five related micro credentials, and now you have this meta micro credential that is a summary saying you have finished that pathway. Meta micro credentials are obviously very cool because they are that recognition, but they don't fall perfectly within our taxonomy, because we are so interested in the competencies, in the knowledge skills and abilities, that the meta micro credential is really just the symbol that you get at the end of that pathway.

Dennise Cardona  18:53  

My next question is, how can micro credentials serve as a pathway for learners? In other words, can they be used to transition from one learning experience to another? And if so, how does that process work?

Speaker 1  19:09  

Yeah, this is something that we are continuously developing and something that is really on the top of our minds, because this is how this work could really be a meaningful pathway not to use the pathway too many times, but this could be a meaningful pathway for folks that aren't considering macro credentials, or don't see macro credentials as a possibility for them. So I'm thinking of two examples that we're working on. We're working with our STEM Ready Program, which is working with current high school students at Montgomery County Public Schools through a pathway at Montgomery College, which is the local community college, and then at UMBC at Shady Grove. Grove, and that is a pathway to stem macro credentials. We've identified four bachelor's degrees through UMBC at universities at Shady Grove, we UMBC are offering a number of co curricular and extracurricular activities that are in a STEM related field that we're acknowledging through a micro credential, right? So we are creating micro credentials and meta micro credentials for the stem ready students as they learn about STEM competencies and as they think about coming to UMBC for their macro credentials. So in that way, there's a very clear path from high school to community college to UMBC, to have micro credentials along the way. Because if we're thinking about some of these STEM competencies, if you are a junior or senior in high school and you get a micro credential that you know how to program in Java, that micro credential could really mean that you have a completely different summer internship experience, right? You could be thinking about different jobs that you otherwise wouldn't be able to have access to, right? So there really is some economic mobility that could happen if you earn these micro credentials really early on, right? But again, it's thinking about, how can this stack? How can this lead to a pathway to that larger macro credential? Because maybe you do find that that really awesome job, and you still need that bachelor's degree right now, you have that pathway built in. The other example I'm thinking about that just all the praise and shout outs to our colleague, Sally Scott, who has really done so much of this work has been phenomenal. She has in her community leadership master's programs. There are a number of skills based courses, and these are short five week experiences, and she has it so that at the end of that experience, if you meet the earning criteria, you earn the micro credential. And we have a meta micro credential associated with those skills based courses. She has one right now that if I recall it's I think if you earn three of the component micro credentials, you earn the meta micro credential. But what's really exciting is that a number of colleagues, huge shout out to all of them. Sally Allison Jones, colleagues in the registrar's office, colleagues in the graduate school, they have made it so that the meta micro credential can be articulated into the master's degree from community leadership. So that is really exciting, right? We're really excited because we are hoping that this becomes a template for other types of macro credentials. So the template being, how could we make shorter experiences, associate a micro credential with that shorter experience, and then have it articulate into a larger macro credential, whether that's a capital C certificate or a master's degree something else. So there's a lot of excitement going on campus right now because we are thinking really deeply about how we could leverage these meta micro credentials to be these robust pathways to UMBC.

Dennise Cardona 23:24

This is the end of Part 1 of our Two part session on microcredentials with Collin Sullivan. Look out for Part two! Thanks as always for tuning in! If you’d like to learn more about our offerings, check out the link in the description.