Microcredentials are Gaining Popularity in Business Education

From professional development programs for educators to traditional industry training, a new way to assess learning progress is gaining traction. As businesses and schools navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and trainers stretch their abilities to provide distance and blended learning, educators across Oklahoma now have another option to help meet their professional learning goals: micro-endorsements through BloomBoard. Oklahoma Public School Resource Center (OPSRC) has partnered with BloomBoard to offer micro-endorsement programs aligned to district salary schedules and strategic plans at a lower cost than traditional graduate degrees.

Typically made up of four to seven micro-credentials, micro-endorsements are digital certifications an individual can earn for specific areas of expertise in their career advancement. Earning a micro-endorsement means an educator has demonstrated competencies required for defined teaching areas. By demonstrating specific competencies through BloomBoard, educators can achieve levels of expertise and compensation that are equivalent to master’s degrees and beyond but that are more cost-effective than traditional graduate courses.

IBM is collaborating with VetBloom, the digital learning ecosystem from Ethos Veterinary Health, to form a group focused on the application of blockchain for learning credentials in the veterinary industry. The goal is to create a framework for competency-based medical education using digital badges to support credentialing.

The veterinary industry is seeing the same macro-educational shift to micro-credentialing and competency-based learning that the rest of the educational market is experiencing. To address this shift, accredited Colleges of Veterinary Medicine in the U.S. have developed new competency-based learning frameworks, and larger private hospital groups are exploring skills-based credentials that lead to data aggregation and competency mapping. Skills-based credentials allow hospitals to better manage labor stratification, scheduling efficiency, and recruiting needs.

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