Beth Barrie (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) on The Rise of Microcredentials and the Policies Behind Them

On this episode, Beth Barrie, Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning Innovation at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, discusses the evolving policies around microcredentials and how to be more aligned with internal and external stakeholders. 

Transcript

Shauna Cox (00:02):Beth, welcome to the Illumination Podcast. I'm so glad you could join me today.

Beth Barrie (00:07):Yeah, thanks for inviting me.

Shauna Cox (00:09):Absolutely. Not a problem. So we're here to talk about micro-credentials, which can be a very large, complex type of ecosystem as I see it, and the policies that surround them. So just to kind of level set us here, how have policies surrounding micro-credentials evolved or not in higher ed over the past few years?

Beth Barrie (00:30):Yeah, so I think that in my experience, as I've talked to colleagues at different universities here in the us, there seems to be different approaches when it comes to policy. So some universities or even community colleges are experimenting with micro-credentials without putting a policy in place, just getting something going, making an employer partnership, seeing how that works. And then after figuring out where the hiccups are and what things might need to be addressed in a policy, then they go through the process of building consensus and coming to the policy. Other institutions I'm aware of started with the policy before they rolled anything out. So that would be the one observation I have there in the policies. When we created our own, we had talked to different institutions, and in general, policy is put in place basically to establish some quality control is kind of how I see it. And so the different policies that we read through all did that in a different way. Some organizations are much more centralized, it's easier to establish quality measures and set standards in a shared governance situation and a decentralized campus, it's a little bit harder.

Shauna Cox (02:01):Absolutely. And we're going to get into the challenges in just a second, but you did mention quality control, and I really want to touch on that and ask what key policies should institutions consider when they're developing and implementing micro-credential programs to ensure that alignment with their long-term academic and workforce goals?

Beth Barrie (02:23):Yeah, I would say from my perspective, if the alternative credentials space, micro-credentials are in that category, it's still so unknown. People are trying to understand what's a certificate, what's a non-credit certificate versus a credit certificate, all of these things. And I think that in general, the public doesn't understand the difference between non-credit and credit, the difference between certificate and certification. So that's been going on for a long time. And then you throw in all of these alternative credentials like microcredentials or badges, and it just gets that much messier. But I would say the thing that at least at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the thing that is distinguishing micro-credentials is that they're skill based and employer aligned. So if there's an opportunity for all of us to come to consensus that microcredentials need to be skill-based instead of you get a badge for participation, if you are not demonstrating a skill in our policy, it has to have a tie to a skill, and the assessment has to be clearly identified where the earner of the microcredential or the badge and in the metadata, the person wanting to verify that credential can dig deep to see the assessment.

(03:52):And so that's something I think people are going to do different things, but my hope for the microcredentials space is that it becomes microcredentials are skill-based and the assessments are transparent.

Shauna Cox (04:07):Absolutely. And I want to go on to that touch point that you made previously and talk about the common challenges. So what are those common challenges that institutions are facing when they're scaling micro-credential initiatives?

Beth Barrie (04:23):Well, in the work that we've done, traditionally, an academic, a faculty member may not be aware of skill-based language. So everyone has course outcomes, course objectives. You can tease out the difference between the outcome and objective. There's a lot of writing about that. But at the end of the day, what students will be able to do or know at the end, whether it's objectives of what the instructor want is trying to do and outcomes versus from a learner perspective, those are sometimes different. Not all that different. They can be different than skills. And so essentially, skills based learning is another way of saying competency-based learning and competency-based education triggers some people, I've worked in that space for a long time, and one of the things that people sometimes struggle with is, well, if you don't award them the credential, are you saying they're incompetent? It's like, no, that's not actually what it's saying.

(05:37):So what I'm finding is that using the word skills seems to be less triggering or offputting, right? People understand skills. Employers hire for skills, they also hire for competencies, but skills are easier. It's just an easier word for people to understand, and it has less baggage, I would say. And so as you try to scale, if you go with the premise that microcredentials need to be, and then you're working with a population of faculty, many of which have not been trained in skills-based learning or competency-based education, there's a language barrier. And so scaling, converting traditional courses into skills-based courses, it's not hard, but faculty are already very busy and being asked to do lots of different things, and so who can help them with that? At my institution, it's our instructional designers that have really embraced that. And so they'll work with faculty and say, okay, here's your course objectives.

(06:55):We've used the skills library and found that this objective seems to be worded a different way in this skills library. Would it be okay if we use, we attach this skill to the badge as they're trying to award microcredentials? And oftentimes then IT instruction designers always are in conversation with faculty as they're helping them put their courses together. So that starts a conversation and they're eventually able to get to, okay, yeah, we're going to attach these skills to this micro-credential. Then as the instruction designer works through the course, if the assessments are not actually skill-based, if it's like right, a five page paper, so then the instruction designer can gently suggest to a faculty member, well, what if you did something that's a little bit more of an authentic assessment? And we have ways of making the grading not a burden. And so the scaling is, I think that transition to using skills language is one of the challenges in scaling micro-credentials. And the solution that seems to be working for us is that our instruction designers help with that. They're basically the interpreter of a traditional course syllabus into more of a skills-based syllabus.

Shauna Cox (08:15):And I want to expand on that a little bit more. You were kind of alluding to some of those, at least first steps solutions here. So I want to ask, what are some of the best practices to overcome some of these obstacles that institutions are facing when trying to scale micro-credential initiatives?

Beth Barrie (08:34):Yeah, that's a good question. Again, what we found is to incorporate some of the work into our course development process. So when a faculty member wants to offer a micro-credential, when a department wants to offer a micro-credential, and at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on the credit side for our registered students are anywhere between six and 11 credits. And so that's two to three, maybe up to four courses. And so as a department is thinking, oh, we'd like to offer a micro-credential, they come to the office of online education and we start working with them of, okay, what are the unique outcomes to this set of courses that you've identified? And then looking at the courses, translating them. So I think the first steps are getting faculty a support system, a team support system as they make this transition into the micro-credential world. The other thing I would say is socializing the idea, because if you think about a faculty member, maybe say a full professor, when they were awarded their degrees, you got one credential for 120 credits.

(10:01):And now with this notion of stackable credentials, you could have micro-credentials that stack into a certificate that then stack into a degree. And so from someone who's been in the academy a long time, it's like, well, why do they get three credentials now when I only got one? And so they're just helping people understand, well, this is a different way of doing it. And working through some of the, I recently realized there can be an implicit bias against new things. And so having conversations on campus where people are able to, in a safe space, share their reservations or express their concerns in a dialogue, that would be some of the first steps as well, right? Because you're going to have early adopters, people who see that this helps all of our students in a very difficult job market with generative ai. It's unclear what employers are going to need in the future, and microcredentials give someone a chance to upskill more quickly. But yet, there are people who have been here for a long time and it's new, and that can be scary or there can be legitimate concerns. So having those conversations early on as you're working with the early adopters and giving them a support system, I think that's kind of the strategy we've been trying to take.

Shauna Cox (11:36):And there are clearly multiple stakeholders and people coming from different areas within micro-credential initiatives and things like that. So how do you think collaboration across the institution, industry partners and certification bodies can improve the recognition value of micro-credentials for students and employers who may not be seeing it or have a hard time understanding it?

Beth Barrie (12:02):Yeah, I think avenues of communication are important. And so feedback loops in particular, so we can work with employers to say, well, what certifications are you looking for? We can embed those in some of our courses, and yet there needs to be a reliable and consistently employed feedback loop of when you're talking to an employer and you say, okay, first of all, when you're hiring, look for these micro-credentials because they're skill-based. And we've been working on aligning them with the skills that you're hiring for. But then once you hire someone, look first talking to employers about start looking for these and this is what they are, because there's an education that needs to happen on the employer side. Even if you've worked with the employer to build the microcredential, the HR managers might not know the hiring people. So there's that education piece. And then making sure after they've started hiring people with Microcredentials saying, okay, you've hired people.

(13:16):Does it seem like they have the scale? These people that you've hired, these microcredentials, are they able to do the job more quickly instead of having to have a lot of on the job training? I think that's one of the advantages of microcredentials, hopefully, is that people often you read that employers will say, well, we require a degree, but then we have to do all of this on the job training because they don't actually know, which there's always going to need to be on the job training, but if the universities and the employers can work together more closely, I think that time could be minimized. And so again, that feedback loop of when you hire these people, do they have the skills that we think that we're verifying they have? Are we verifying the right things? I think that that's to have that collaboration so that it's not a guessing game, like, oh, we think people should know this, and you can bring the employers in. And we do bring them in from the creation of the microcredential, then getting the feedback afterwards to say, are you seeing a difference in the people you're hiring with Microcredentials?

Shauna Cox (14:33):Absolutely. And because it's such a complex ecosystem of microcredentials, there's so many different avenues, stakeholders, there's millions of microcredentials out there. I think we'd be remiss to not talk about the logistics behind them, and especially in a more digital age, the technology behind it. So what role do you believe technology plays in streamlining the delivery and management of all of these programs, especially with respect to the student experience and then that employer engagement piece?

Beth Barrie (15:10):One of the things that I am very excited about is learning and employment records. And so that's a technology that these digitally verified credentials, and it doesn't have to be blockchain, but that you cannot necessarily fudge them, right? They're stamped and you can't go back and alter them. And so I think that learning and employment records is an emerging technology. They're out there. WGU has a wallet. Indiana, the state of Indiana has their achievement wallet. ASU Pocket is a great example. So it's not that, but the technology is in the early stages, and I think it's going to be very transformative, but it's very tricky because to me, I never really got on board the MOOC bandwagon because it never made sense to me, like the business model. So you're giving away all this. I know people have made it work. I'm not opposed to MOOCs, but as far as, oh, I think that UNLV, you should really go all in on MOOCs.

(16:28):It just didn't ever make sense. But learning and employment records are something that I think that universities need to start thinking about. And basically it's changing the transcript and it's giving the learner control over their transcript. And the reason that it relates to your question about managing micro-credentials and all those different things, if you have a learning employment record, then the learner is able to manage the micro-credentials themselves. It's in their wallet, and when they go to apply for a job, they can show the skills that they want to show. And if you can get employers also verifying these skills in the same wallet space, that to me, that technology will help bring everybody on board. But I will say, not only are microcredentials new learning and employment records are also new, and there's a lot of education that needs to happen. When I talk to our technology people, I'll say, well, let's do a proof of concept.

(17:31):We don't want to be left behind here. We need to be figuring this out. And they'll say, well, this isn't a case of if we build it for you, people will just start using it. And they will say, students don't even know what it is, and employers don't know what it is. And I said, yeah, but if you don't build me something, I can them, I can't have them come to use it. And so it's kind of a chicken and the egg problem. I do believe that on both sides, students need to be aware and be able to tell their story of the skills that they have. And so that's a huge educational opportunity. There's community outreach. Things happen with students, and then employers, even in the hiring practices, they very rarely dig deep into what are the skills. Now at this point, hiring is still really hit or miss across lots of sectors. And so employers have to be educated as well. And even employer hiring practices, they say they hire for skills, but sometimes they're not articulating the skills they actually need. What does critical thinking mean? They don't dig deep down enough into these job descriptions. And so the technology, I think is there, and it helps get people all on the same page, but there's a lot of education that happens that needs to happen for students and employers.

Shauna Cox (19:05):Exactly. That education piece is so important because we're headed towards such great things, but everybody needs to be on the same page first and understand where we are, where we need to go, and how do we get there,

Beth Barrie (19:20):Right? So when you apply for jobs now, a lot of times you have to fill out, you basically have to enter your resume into their fields on their platform, and then you go to a different organization and it's using a different platform. So yet you still upload your PDF resume and that gets scraped. But there's first of all, not a standard platform, and there probably never will be. But I do believe that if we could get some major learning employment, record census, that maybe that's easier. And then these big HR firms that will scrape the resumes or build these platforms, if they can then modify their procedures to be able to pull data from a learning and employment record rather than having everybody enter into multiple different systems and upload a resume. So there's a lot of work to, and I think it can happen.

Shauna Cox (20:19):Absolutely. Well, that's all the questions that we have for you. But before we let you go, we have to switch from being a higher ed podcast to more food oriented. And you are of course, in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'm sure there's thousands of places you can recommend, but if someone's coming, where do they need to go?

Beth Barrie (20:39):Well, what I'll say is my daughter lives in London, and the first thing that she does when she comes home to visit is she goes to tacos El Godo. So it's not necessarily they don't serve you the food you order. It's a very interesting place. But tacos, El Gordo is always the first stop when my daughter comes from out of town. So yeah, and then she has made everyone else, it's also their first stop as well, so it kind of spreads. So when you read blogs and all the different things, there's lots of competing, oh, this is the best taco place. But Taco del Godo is a really awesome experience.

Shauna Cox (21:17):Amazing. I love it. Beth, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was great chatting with you.

Beth Barrie (21:22):Thanks for the invitation. Have a wonderful day.