This document discusses three topics: 1) the success of Professor Brown's MOOC on making MOOCs with over 8,000 learners and a 54% completion rate, 2) the landscape of credentials in higher education including macro-credentials, micro-credentials, and nano-credentials, and 3) the rise of micro-credentials and the tension around their positioning as alternative or supplementary credentials versus tools for fundamentally disrupting traditional qualifications.

1. Professor Mark Brown
Dublin City University
23rd
June 2021

2. Opening title sequence at No 2 on list of TV's top 10 credits

3. 1965 2008

4. Hi-tech Low-touch

5. Good Bad

6. Outline…
• Making MOOCs
• Higher Education 4.0
• Rise of Micro-credentials

7. 2021

9. 1. Making MOOCs

12. Hybrid

13. 90,000
Educators

17. Rich Conversations…
Engagement

21. How are you feeling
about your online
learning experience?

24. • 8,000+ learners
• High engagement
• 54% completion rate
• 1,600+ DCU certificates
• 4.7 quality rating
• Next offering Sept 2021

25. 2. Higher Education 4.0

28. Who is shaping and future and for what purpose?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVWHp8FsV1w

34. Credit Bearing
Non Credit Bearing
Bundled Unbundled
Credential
Ecology
Macro-credentials
Formal Accredited
Degrees
Micro-credentials
Formal & Semi Formal
Accredited & Stackable
Nano-credentials
Informal & Non-Formal
Digital Badges & Certificates
Non-status Awards
Semi-Formal Courses
Non-Accredited
(Brown et al., 2020)

40. 3. Rise of micro-credentials

46. 46
https://www.dcu.ie/nidl
https://www.dcu.ie/nidl

47. 47
55 additional
publications

53. • An inherent tension in how micro-credentials are
positioned in the literature
• Viewpoints range from alternative or
supplementary credentials to those embedded
in mainstream educational offerings
• Very few higher education institutions are using
micro-credentials as a means of fundamentally
disrupting traditional credential frameworks and
qualifications

57. “Because alternative credentials are not identified in the
educational attainment component of national labour force
surveys or in international surveys of adult skills (such as
PIAAC), evidence on their effects on earnings of large-
scale populations is unavailable"
(Kato, Galán-
Muros & Weko,
2020, p.28).

60. Go raibh maith
agaibh!
Over to you…