Sports Wizard® has to address the recognition and award of microcredentials. By this we mean those portable credentials that meet the needs of lifelong learners and have a place in a variety of educational contexts nationally and internationally.
One example of this attempt is provided by the European MOOC Consortium’s Common Microcredential Framework (link). The Consortium notes that the framework comes “in response to demand from learners to develop new knowledge, skills and competencies from shorter, recognised and quality-assured courses, which can also be used to earn traditional university qualifications”(link).
The foundation of the microcredential framework specifies that courses that qualify are charactersed by:
- a total study time of no less than 100 hours and no more than 150 hours,including revision for, and completion of, the summative assessment (award of academic credit, either directly following successful completion of a microcredential or via recognition of prior learning upon enrollment as a student on the university’s course of study);
- Level 6 or Level 7 in the European Qualification Framework or the equivalent levels in the university’s national qualification framework;
- a reliable method of identification verification at the point of assessment that complies with a university’s policies and/or is widely adopted across the platforms authorised to use the Common Microcredential Framework;
- a transcript that sets out the learning outcomes for a microcredential, total study hours required, European Qualification Framework level (or equivalent) and number of credit points earned. (Link)
These are profoundly important issues to be addressed. We see microcredentials an inherent part of Sports Wizard®’s development as a learning organisation and central to the thinking of the Academy under development.
