Preparing for the Future of Modular and Flexible Learning

The advent of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement in England is a promising development towards lifelong participation in post-18 education. It has tremendous potential to address the growing societal skill gap challenge; driven by a rapidly developing technology environment, including AI, big data and extended reality.

The Lifelong Loan Entitlement has the potential to provide the post-18 education sector, working alongside employers, the opportunity to increase the reach of modular and flexible learning, something that has driven The Open University’s pioneering work in the development of microcredential courses. In early 2020 the university set itself the challenge of delivering a short-course approach to learning, focussed on in-demand skills, developed alongside industry partners. We set ourselves the task of creating new curriculum at pace and scale to meet an already growing skill gap challenge.

The first presentation of our new microcredential courses was in March 2020 as the world faced into the Covid-19 pandemic. Microcredentials proved to be an important element of responding to a key societal challenge resulting from the pandemic, allowing learners to gain new skills in a matter of weeks and enabling them to change roles within their existing employer or change sector entirely. Governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland reacted rapidly to the opportunity presented by microcredentials through the provision of free funded places.

The Open University now has 26 microcredential courses open to learners around the world through our platform partner FutureLearn in subjects ranging from cyber security and agile leadership to organisational sustainability.

At the end of this month, the university will begin its 11th presentation of microcredential courses and will have enrolled over 12,000 learners all across the UK and globally.

A new approach to designing flexible learning models and short course curriculum

To develop courses at speed we had to deploy a radically different approach to curriculum development. Traditionally we may have spent several years developing new curriculum but, by their nature, courses designed to meet the in-demand skills for learners and employers required a more agile and rapid development and delivery approach. This challenge required our academic teams, learning design and production colleagues, as well as our academic governance teams to collaborate in news ways. My colleagues across the organisation responded to the challenge brilliantly, in some cases developing courses in a matter of weeks.

Working with business and industry to meet skills needs

In addition to new ways of creating courses, we wanted to use the creation of our new microcredentials to develop curriculum alongside employers, often co-creating the learning and assessment material as well as adding all important industry endorsement. To date our industry partnerships have included Cisco, AWS, the Agile Business Consortium.

As well as being welcomed by governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland and recently Wales for their ability to respond their skills gaps crisis, employers have welcomed the short course with credit format, and companies such as Uber are paying for eligible employees to study microcredentials as well as undergraduate study as part of their benefit employment offer.

In today’s rapidly accelerating and increasing complex economy, the skills gap is something that is constantly changing shape, as fresh needs arise to match the demands of today and the tomorrow. As a result, employers and companies both need to be agile when it comes to skills development. Stackable microcredentials enable employees, at any age, to learn at their own pace and gains skills to change role and even sector while advancing towards their career ambitions.

While more employers are looking at skills-based hiring to address talent shortages, validating a candidate's skills is problematic, especially for entry-level roles, when a career starter or switcher may lack a degree level qualification or relevant prior work experience.

In the context of a rapidly accelerating technology, specialisation will be at the forefront of skills development. Basic requirements of jobs are being automated, forcing employers to respond by pivoting the focus of their business. At the same time, companies are rapidly demanding demonstratable competency in the emerging technologies that are transforming the workplace, such as generative AI, data analytics and extended reality.

Linking modular learning with the components for full qualifications

Alongside a radically different approach to the development of curriculum we have also used microcredentials to develop new approaches to counting qualifications.  By offering academic credit for skill focussed microcredentials, we have the opportunity to create stackable qualification routes that offers learners multiple pathways to gain employment, earn university credit, and even pursue a full degree.

Two models have been developed by the Open University: firstly, a model whereby microcredentials can count towards an existing qualification up to a maximum of 1/3 of the total credit; and secondly an opportunity to devise stackable qualifications made entirely out of microcredential credit. Both models positively impact the options available to our microcredential learners and our qualification students and will facilitate choice as we move towards the Lifelong Loan Entitlement.

Matching flexible learning with clear careers goals and progression routes

Bringing together industry partnerships will over time allow us to develop subject pathways and progression routes. An example is the suite of courses we are developing with the Agile Business Consortium, with an agile leadership pathway taking learners from introductory short courses in the subject through to our credit-bearing microcredentials.

Stepping into the future

And we are not stopping there, the rapidly changing external environment post pandemic shows no sign of slowing down and so we are continuing to develop our course pipeline and learner pathway approach to anticipate future needs for upskilling and reskilling across key sectors of the economy. Microcredentials have proved a fantastic way for the Open University to deliver on our mission and meet society at its point of need with high quality, flexible skill-based learning; for us the journey has just begun.

About the author

Tim Plyming is the Managing Director of Short Courses and Microcredentials at the Open University where he leads all paid short course activity harnessing the University’s world-leading reputation in pedagogy, research, academic content and learning design.

Tim joined the Open University in September 2020 from content agency Green Rock Media where he was responsible for leading a full-service creative studio for a diverse global client base including Sony, Netflix, Arup, BBC, XPRIZE, Sainsbury’s and NatWest. Tim has a wealth of production experience, having previously worked for the BBC, The British Museum, Nesta and News International. Tim’s achievements include leading the award-winning BBC Digital Olympics programme for London 2012, Executive Producer for BBC’s World War One Centenary and launching the first websites for BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6Music, as well as the first digital versions of The Times, The Sun, and The Sunday Times.

Click here to find out more about the Open University's Microcredentials.

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