Some companies provide formal training opportunities or other educational benefits; others don’t, but that doesn’t mean their employees can’t pursue professional development opportunities on their own time. As technology continues to evolve, there are more options available than ever before for those who are looking to sharpen their skills outside of the workplace. From online courses and resources to networking opportunities through social media and beyond, there are countless places professionals can turn to strengthen their skill sets.
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Monday, January 16, 2023
These are the top 5 skills you need to get hired in 2023 - Nicky Garcea, Fast Company
Instead, hiring managers are keen on identifying skills that build out other skills. Research from my company, Cappfinity, shows that by having these five behavioral skills as a foundation, individuals can acquire new skills and talents and continue to utilize them throughout their careers. The best way to understand yourself from a skills perspective is to consider the things you’re good at, but also the things that give you energy. Those two components will truly allow you to develop that skill into a strength. Here are the five skills we have identified that hiring managers are the most impressed by in today’s competitive work environment, and how you can recognize them in yourself.
Sunday, January 15, 2023
Closing the skills gap with microcredentials - Cecil Banhan, eCampus News
Without a proper plan of action to provide critical training, organizations risk ineffective business operations and missed employee growth opportunities. To close the skills gap, organizations must prioritize and invest in continued learning opportunities like microcredentials: mini-qualifications that enhance an individual’s skills and knowledge in a specific subject area. By leveraging existing microcredential programs from educational institutions, companies can effectively upskill and reskill their employees. Simultaneously, universities benefit from corporate partnerships with companies by offering microcredential options, creating more accessible education opportunities and expanding their reach with potential students.
Saturday, January 14, 2023
BCIT launches new micro-credential for net-zero and Passive House - Peter Caulfield, Journal of Commerce
The British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) has introduced a micro-credential program that covers the basics of net-zero and Passive House construction. A tightly focused rapid training program, Essentials of Net-Zero and Passive House Construction is for anyone who wants to learn the basics of how to construct high-performance buildings that meet the standards of the BC Energy Step Code, net-zero energy and Passive House. The micro-credential covers what is needed to understand building enclosures, electrical and mechanical systems. It consists of four required courses and one optional course.
Friday, January 13, 2023
YouTube Will Launch a Feature Bringing Structured Learning Experiences into Its Channels - IBL News
YouTube announced it will launch a new feature called Courses soon to bring structured learning experiences along with a monetization solution. Instructors will be able to organize their videos along with reading materials and questions. The content will be offered for free or for a fee without any ads. YouTube unveiled this feature, now in beta, at its annual Google conference in India this week.
Thursday, January 12, 2023
Workers and employers are increasingly invested in digital credentials. - KYRA SUTTON, Fast Company
Today, applicants can earn digital certificates or “badges” through online courses to signal to employers that they are invested in lifelong learning and to demonstrate the skills they possess. One of the most popular places to do so is LinkedIn Learning. LinkedIn reports that more than 44% of users added certificates to their profiles in the last two years. And LinkedIn Learning is expected to grow in the years ahead. The company recently acquired learning management system EduBrite and expanded its partnership with software development training firm GitHub.
Wednesday, January 11, 2023
Collin College partners with Rice University to open tax initiative to provide students with free textbooks, resources - North Dallas Gazette
Collin College is now part of the Institutional Partner Program for Rice University’s educational technology initiative, OpenStax. The free program provides higher education institutions with open educational resources (OER) to support their mission of improving educational access and learning for everyone. (volodymyr-hryshchenko / Unsplash)
After a lengthy selection process, Collin College was named a partner in October 2022. OpenStax representatives will visit the college in the upcoming spring semester and offer faculty and staff ways to implement OpenStax resources in class for student success.
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Gauging the macro impact of microcredentials - Susan Manning, eCampus News
By pairing microcredentials with digital credentials, individuals are prepared for a changing workforce and can make a big impact in three key ways. Digital credentials provide a common language of knowledge, skills, and abilities for the emerging workforce. Employers use them to help talent management verify, quantify, and understand the skills and competencies of both candidate pools and current employees. Think of microcredentials as the “what” and digital credentials as the “how.” Microcredentials represent what is being learned. Digital credentials are how a student makes use of what is being learned.
Monday, January 9, 2023
Immersive East Tennessee State Program Provides Accelerated Tech Degrees, Guaranteed Jobs - American Council on Education
ETSU, home to one of Tennessee’s most comprehensive computer science programs, and BCBST, a leading employer in the state, recently debuted an intensive program called the BlueSky Tennessee Institute to help replenish the talent pipeline. Upon graduation, students will earn a bachelor’s degree in computing with a concentration in information systems from ETSU and a full-time job offer paying over $50,000 from BCBST. BlueSky has accumulated enough scholarship funding to enable the first cohort to graduate debt-free, and it aims to replicate this for subsequent classes. The partners hope the program’s affordability and the career security it provides will expand the tech talent pool by attracting students who were not planning to go to college.
Sunday, January 8, 2023
Micro-credentials: The new way forward to plug talent gaps and support lifelong learning - Arina Sofiah, Human Resources Online
However, the global issue of attracting and retaining talent remains prevalent in the post-pandemic world. In the ICT sector specifically, Singapore faces a talent gap of 19,000, particularly in roles like software engineering and development. As one tech leader pointed out: “Singapore is home to 80 of the world’s top 100 tech companies and over 3,800 tech enabled start-ups, yet one of the nation’s biggest challenges that persists is talent shortage.” As a whole, Singapore needs 1.2mn additional digital workers by 2025 to remain competitive, according to a report commissioned by Amazon Web Services. Clearly, there is a need to nurture a strong pipeline of local talent, including fresh graduates and mid-career professionals, while ensuring our existing workforce remains relevant and competitive in this fast-changing digital economy.
Saturday, January 7, 2023
UT System and Google announce Google Career Certificates for up to 10,000 Texas university students - Catherine Frazier, University of Texas System
The certificates equip people with job-ready skills in the fields of data analytics, e-commerce and digital marketing, IT Support, automation in python, project management and user experience (UX) design. “Pairing a bachelor’s degree with a Google certificate leads to graduates who are both broadly educated and specifically skilled—a winning combination for students and employers,” said UT System Chancellor James B. Milliken. Through Google’s largest university partnership to date and with the support of Coursera, UT institutions will embed the certificates into undergraduate degree programs and co-curricular experiences with options to receive university credit at no additional cost to students.
Friday, January 6, 2023
Millions of Credentials Available – So What’s Next? - Rob Coyle & Kelly Hoyland, IMS Global
However, while we celebrate this growth, we cannot let it distract us from continuing to ensure that as digital credentials become more common, they also become more valuable to both learners and employers. Credential Engine CEO Scott Cheney made a good point in an article from Inside Higher Ed when he said, “The diversity of the marketplace is both a good thing and a challenge. It shows there’s a lot of innovation and there’s a lot of different ways to advance yourself, but we don’t have good information still about which ones are the best ways, and that’s what we really have to focus on … It’s easy to get lost in this chaos.”
Thursday, January 5, 2023
Workforce hampered by broken relationship between community colleges and employers, report finds - Rick Seltzer, Inside Higher Ed
The relationship between community colleges and employers isn’t adequate to feed today’s workforce, especially when it comes to middle-skill jobs, according to a report released Monday that calls on both education and business leaders to revamp their practices. Just 10% of community college leaders said employers would guarantee jobs to students who completed programs, according to the report from Harvard Business School’s Project on Managing the Future of Work and the American Association of Community Colleges. Some 47% of employers said hiring from the open market is more cost effective than spending on training new workers.
Wednesday, January 4, 2023
Young adults want more workforce training - Laura Ascione, eCampus News
In the midst of the growing conversation about the ROI of a college degree, a new report from Multiverse reveals that parental expectations push students to attend college, even though 50 percent of young adults believe a college degree isn’t worth the cost. The report challenges the notion that only one education pathway–a degree–can lead to high-paying and high-growth careers. Among other compelling data points, the survey revealed that while 48 percent of adults say they were expected to attend college, 76 percent would skip college if their dream job was attainable post-high school.
Tuesday, January 3, 2023
Suggested Alternative Names for ‘Noncredit’ Programs - Matt Reed, Inside Higher Ed
Broadly speaking, “noncredit” programs fall into three major categories: adult basic education, workforce development and personal enrichment. ABE refers to programs like adult literacy or entry-level ESL. They’re meant to address illiteracy or to help recent immigrants learn or improve their English. Workforce development programs are meant to help prepare people for specific types of jobs. Sometimes they substitute for traditional degrees, although they’re also popular among career changers and among folks who need continuing education to remain current in their fields. The final category refers to courses that people take just for personal interest.
Monday, January 2, 2023
Microcredentials: Why Industry Is in the Driver’s Seat - Vis Naidoo, Cheryl Kinzel, & Natasja Saranchuk; Evolllution
Microcredentials are rooted in the digital badge movement that first gained traction to support adult learning in the workforce. One of the earliest players was a group called Open Badges, created by Mozilla Foundation in 2013 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation. This focus can be traced back to the “use of symbols in ancient times to reflect different meanings (and) has evolved into modern-day usage of digital badges and microcredentials to indicate achievements, knowledge, skills, and competencies.”[1]
Sunday, January 1, 2023
Seek and ye shall find (some) micro-credentials - Campus Morning Mail, Australia
The Commonwealth-funded MicroCred Seeker was built and will be run by the NSW Universities Admission Centre. There are MCs from just ten universities and five private providers, but a bunch more of institutions are listed, suggesting content from them is imminent. However the big corporates who provide training to all comers aren’t in sight – Google for example, which offers courses via Coursera. Perhaps they don’t fit a definition of MC or are in the queue. TEQSA-registered providers are getting first go, with others, “able to be onboarded in future phases.”
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Retrain, reskill returning OFWs; ensure their stay — Argyll Cyrus Geducos, Manila Bulletin
President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. raised the need to “retrain” and “reskill” overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who wish to come back to the country for good as he pointed out that “micro-credentials” will make workers adaptable and diversely skilled. Marcos said this in a meeting with the Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC) members, where they tackled workers’ skills development and learning recovery programs. According to Marcos, micro-credentials are vital for Filipino workers to remain competitive in the workforce.
Friday, December 30, 2022
Five Thoughts on the Next Five Years: Where Higher Ed is Headed - Vickie Cook, Evolllution
While the most impactful trends will vary somewhat among institution types, this article will review five trends that will impact institutions across the United States in the next few years.... A fourth trend that continues to grow is Continuing Education and alternative credentials. Strategic thinking about the future must include a fortified Continuing Education effort with strong initiatives in building alternative credentials that help students incrementally gain and skills develop their employability. Practicing sound CE principals to deliver customized courses allows for professional skill development to meet the private employment sector’s needs.
Thursday, December 29, 2022
The Micro-Credentials Movement Has Arrived - Eric Lloyd, Chief Executive
When companies as widely recognized and well established as Boeing, Walmart, and IBM start moving in a similar direction on something, it’s safe to say the idea has legs. In this case, companies are looking towards skills-based hiring in tandem with degree-based hiring. The idea here is for companies to remove “must-have” barriers around hiring—such as “must have an MBA” or “must have a four-year degree”—in favor of hiring for the skills they need in a specific candidate. According to an oft-cited piece of research, hiring for skills is five times more predictive of job performance and, ultimately, results in a better-prepared workforce.
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Arkansas college offers trucking operations 'micro-credential' program - Truckers News Staff (TN)
A new opportunity to learn about how trucking companies operate is available at an Arkansas college. Focus EduSolutions, in partnership with Arkansas Tech University, announces the launch of a program awarding micro-credentials in Trucking Operations. The program was designed by industry experts for those looking to start a new profession or further their careers. The micro-credentials will teach the basics and fundamentals of how to be successful in trucking.
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