Accelerating to Opportunity: Implementing a Unified Achievement Framework for Learners to Earn and Demonstrate Value

Concurrent Session 2

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

Micro-credentials are becoming increasingly common, and the desire to offer them spans industry and education.  But what exactly are these new offerings? How big or small should they be? And which micro-credentials should my organization offer?  This session will discuss how WGU recently implemented a Unified Achievement Framework and lessons learned from the rollout.

Presenters

Additional Authors

Extended Abstract

In the not-so-distant past, the idea of offering a micro-credential was considered niche, and a novel idea.  Fast-forward to today, however, and micro-credentials are offered just about everywhere: through platforms like LinkedIn, internally in large organizations, and in higher education.  With an increase in micro-credential offerings, some key questions emerged: how do we gauge the value of a micro credential, whether that is to the learner, employer, or the grantor? How should we define a micro-credential? What are the different types of micro-credentials? What kinds of micro-credentials do we want to offer? 

It became clear offering micro-credentials was a way that our organization could provide incremental value to our learners should they need to stop out before obtaining a degree. We knew that for these offerings to have the most value possible, we needed to create a common, organization-wide framework so that we could be confident that micro-credentials with the same designation were equivalent in size and scope.  Additionally, we wanted to ensure that all micro-credentials were relevant, verified, and portable so as to provide value to both learners and employers. 

During this Discovery Session, participants will be engaged with a brief overview of the Unified Achievement Framework.  The main focus of the time together, however, will be to engage attendees in a discussion of the value of a framework both from an organizational perspective as well as the perspective of the learner and/or employers.   

 

Learning Outcomes: 

  1. Participants will be able to describe key features of the Unified Achievement Framework. 

  1. Participants will be able to apply the concepts of the Unified Achievement Framework to their own organizations