Country: Spain

A light-weight approach to certify digital skills training as microcredentials in DEP projects

Best practices A light-weight approach to certify digital skills training as microcredentials in DEP projects Users: Training providers (public) | Training providers (private) | Theme: Accreditation and certification | Action: Education programmes/courses | Beneficiaries: Training providers (public) | Training providers (private)  EURIDICE EURIDICE Hans Akkermans Anna Bon In our DEP-project EURIDICE, we have designed a method for quality assurance of the digital skills trainings provided by our SME and other non-academic project partners. It is the desire, in the Digital Europe Program, of the EU Commission that all course providers are able to hand out to all learners/students (if they wish so) an official certificate stating their achievements in terms of learning outcomes, including the associated amount of work done by learners/students. This is called a microcredential. So the stakeholders are: non-academic training institutes, higher academic education institutes, trainees and students, the labor market in Europe. The challenge? The recognition of non-academic courses in Europe is still not formalised, despite the need to recognise micro-credentials for life-long learning. As starting point, the EU has described (see the European Union leaflet A European Approach to Micro-Credentials, updated Dec 2021) a set of standards to which courses need to comply, to become a microcredential. What is lacking here is the procedure for Quality Assurance. MicroCredentials certainly carry the risk of a further bureaucratisation of higher education with evermore forms to be filled in by staff, box-ticking “accountability” and layers of so-called managerial “control”. So it is important to uphold the autonomy and experience of academic, education and research staff as being leading here. And to state this explicitly in the procedures.The issue here is: how to do Quality Assurance of non-academic, non-accredited courses? And who is entitled to do so? The issue is how to formalise trust, knowledge and authority.In summary: How can we include the SME short-track training modules into academic curricula, or provide a valid certificate of quality to the trainees? How can we assess the quality of the educational offering from SMEs and non-academic partners in our DEP project? Our solution We propose a method of assessment of courses, which we call the EURIDICE MicroCredentials Approach. It starts with the establishment of a so-called MicroCredential Board of academic senior experts from universities, companies or sector organisations. Following the following QA (see below), they are entitled to hand out to training providers the right to add to the certificates they hand out to their learners/students a EURIDICE-level “stamp”, as it were: EURIDICE Quality-Assured MicroCredential. The QA procedure is as follows, to ensure transparency and simplicity: Course providers submit a description of a course to be accepted as a EURIDICE MicroCredential to the Board. The MicroCredential Board validates that this description satisfies the EU guidelines (see the template given in Annex I of the 2022 Council of Europe Recommendation (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32022H0627(02)). As part of this, the MicroCredential Board validates that there is a quality assurance system in place, and if so what its nature is. In most cases this will be an existing and established one (accreditation systems, special appointed committee in place (e.g. exam committee), review or advisory boards etc.), and the MicroCredential Board simply references this. (Thus, we are not going to redo the quality assurance work itself!). In a few cases, if there is no defined (external) quality assurance system in place, the MicroCredential Board offers the facility to carry out a EURIDICE review. This takes place in the form of an academic peer review that is fully analogous to the peer review established quality system of research publications. Peer-review system[The role of a submitted course is thus analogous to a paper submitted to a journal or conference, the role of the MicroCredential Board is then analogous to the editorial board of a scientific journal, and it then acts upon the expert advice of appointed knowledgeable reviewers, to make an argued decision (accept or not).] Outcomes The EURIDICE project develops courses for students (international joint master DIGISOC, see https://digitalsociety4innovation.eu), plus self-standing modules for teachers and professionals in the sectors of Education, Culture and Communication. In order to speed up the microcredential work, all courses in the respective course catalogues are described following the European standard elements template provided in Annex I of the above-mentioned EU Council Recommendation of 16 June 2022. These course catalogues for students, teachers and professionals are produced and made public as upcoming (mid-term) deliverables. The idea is then that multiple courses (or even the catalogue as a whole) can be submitted in one go as a batch to the MicroCredential Board for consideration.Principle of proportionality: Both the MicroCredential course description template and the peer review mechanism make it possible to scale the course writing and review effort, in the same way that in research a 6-page conference article is handled differently in review effort than a whole PhD thesis or textbook. Key takeaways Our experience is that microcredentials are generally seen as a very complex issue. It is therefore advisable to keep things as simple as possible: A course description according to the European standard elements template (Annex I of the Council 2022 Recommendation) typically already contains the information that teachers would write anyway in any decent course description or study guide for students, so it is possible to avoid extra bureaucratic burdens for teaching staff. Course descriptions are to be concise, as usual in a study guide (per course no more than 1-2 pages, and a limited number of learning outcomes). Simplicity and flexibility of templates, formats and procedures is furthermore important in view of the need to respect (in fact, benefit from) the expertise and autonomy of staff, education and research, and to avoid a counter-productive top-down approach. Principle of subsidiarity: The MicroCredential Board has a (limited) validating role, it is not going to redo QA procedures when they are already institutionally in place (such as official exam boards or supervisory/advisory bodies). The peer review mechanism is intended as a back-up system when an institutional QA system does not (yet) exist. Uptake:

Accreditation under the European approach – Challenges arising from the different status of national implementation

Best practices Accreditation under the European approach – Challenges arising from the different status of national implementation Users: Training providers (public) | Training providers (private) | Theme: Accreditation and certification | Action: Education programmes/courses | Beneficiaries: Training providers (public) | Training providers (private)  DIGITAL4Business DIGITAL4Business Sophie Schulz Horacio Gonzales Velez Dietmar Janetzko   The aim of the Digital4Business (D4B) project is the conception and development of a joint Master’s degree program by four (originally six) European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs): the National College of Ireland (Ireland), Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal), Università di Bologna (Italy), and Linköping Universitet (Sweden) in collaboration with partners from industry. One of the milestones in the project is the accreditation of the Master’s program. Here, the consortium opted for an accreditation procedure under the European Approach, an accreditation methodology developed specifically for joint programs. The European Approach was primarily chosen for reasons of efficiency. The main benefits of the European Approach are: (i) it facilitates external quality assurance through the application of common standards and guidelines, which leads to mutual recognition of the accreditation procedure across the participating countries; (ii) it significantly reduces the administrative and organizational burden by applying to one single accreditation body. The European Approach eliminates the need for multiple applications, assessments, and reviews, saving time and resources for institutions. Moreover, instead of undergoing separate accreditation processes in each participating country, joint programs can be assessed once against a common set of standards and with a joint site visit at only one institution/in only one country. Without the European Approach, all four HEIs would have had to carry out individual national accreditation procedures, which would have resulted in significantly more time and effort as well as much higher costs. The challenge? In the accreditation preparation phase, the D4B consortium learned that the European Approach accreditation will only be available and fully recognised in countries that have implemented the European Approach. As the European Approach is only a political commitment and not a legally binding agreement, it requires implementation at the national level. Regarding national implementation, the European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education (EQAR) differentiates between three categories: 1) European Approach available to all HEIs, 2) European Approach available to some HEIs or only under specific conditions, 3) European Approach not available to HEIs. The consortium found that Ireland and Portugal fall under the second category and that the European Approach is available at these two institutions. However, this was not the case for Italy and Sweden as these two countries have not implemented the European Approach at national level, which means that a European Approach accreditation is not possible at any HEI from these countries. Our solution The fact that the European Approach is not available in all countries was solved by the decision that only the Ireland and Portugal (both countries have (partly) implemented the European Approach at national level) will be degree-awarding countries. The two HEIs from Sweden and Italy are still fully and actively engaged in the design, implementation and delivery of the program but only act as providing (i.e. non-awarding) institutions. Outcomes The Master’s program was initially accredited with requirements. The accreditation procedure was carried out by ASIIN, a European registered accreditation agency, applying the European Approach. The fulfilment of requirements was completed after six months, which was six months before the official deadline. The Master’s program received full accreditation for a period of six years, which corresponds to the recommendations of the European Approach procedures. Valid until 30 September 2030, the final D4B accreditation is recorded in EQAR Key takeaways HEIs should inform themselves about the national accreditation requirements at an early stage (possibly even before a proposal is submitted). All (academic) partners should have a high degree of flexibility (e.g. with regard to internal resource and budget allocation) in order to be able to react to unexpected problems or changing conditions. This is a lesson learned of particular importance within the D4B project as the consortium had to compensate for the loss of two of the (initially) six universities in the middle of the accreditation process. One had decided to withdraw from the consortium and only remain as an associated partner. The other one was no longer suitable as an academic partner as it was lacking official recognition as a university by the state/ministry. The loss of the two academic partners meant that the modules that had been developed by them had to be redistributed among the four remaining universities. Fortunately, the redistribution worked smoothly thanks to the close cooperation and solution-oriented approach of all partners. Ultimately, the redistribution of modules served as a good opportunity to revise and update the module content. When choosing the European Approach, the consortium, and particularly the academic partners, must be clear from the very outset that this is a joint effort that requires close cooperation, a great deal of coordination, very good planning, and a well-thought-out distribution of responsibilities and tasks. It is very important that all (academic) partners contribute to this joint procedure, in particular for drafting and compiling the necessary documentation to be included in the self-evaluation report. Even if, as mentioned above, the European Approach was chosen for reasons of efficiency and because of the lower administrative burden, the effort involved in preparing a (successful) accreditation procedure should not be underestimated. Compiling the extensive set of application documents is not only very time-consuming, but also reveals some of the content-related, formal and organizational challenges that arise when several higher education institutions from different countries jointly develop and deliver a degree program. The consortium should be very aware of this effort and the high workload from the outset and allow sufficient preparation time (including improvement loops etc.). Learn more here