by MICHAEL SANKEY

With all the interest in Minister Tehan’s new short courses  and the hype around what role micro-credentials may play in this (that we have all experienced over the three years), you would think that most uni’s would have something in place by now.

But that’s not the case.

A recent survey conducted by the Australasian Council on Open, Distance and eLearning (ACODE) has found only about half of our universities have a policy around this and even less (32 per cent) have figured out how to align their credentials to a qualifications framework, or have a credentialing engine in place to drive the process at their institution.

Interestingly, 82 per cent of institutions are planning to do this for their short courses, while 50 per cent are looking at post-grad courses. But less than a third are looking at it for their undergraduate courses.

However, there have have been a couple of notable shifts over the last year, with institution’s considering micro-credentials in relation to professional practice degrees, (though this has been around for at least 3 years), particularly around industry partnerships. There is also consideration of co-delivery with providers in VET.

The survey findings are in the latest ACODE White-Paper released on Tuesday, Survey of micro-credentialing practice in Australasian universities 2020.

Professor Michael Sankey. Director, Learning Transformations, Griffith University, and President of ACODE.