Athabasca University (Canada) has
launched "PowerED"™, a set of online self paced short courses for workplace skills. Brian Stewart, Deputy CIO of the University of Alberta, is leading the
Crafting a Digital Strategy course (and former student in my
ICT Sustainability course). The announcement is well timed, with reports such as Deloitte Access Economic's "
Premium Skills" pointing out the value of soft and digital skills. However, like other "microlearning modules", offered by universities, it is not clear how this education fits with current offerings: Does this count towards a degree? Is it recognized by industry?
The
Digital Transformation Leadership Certificate in Cloud (shortening the name to save time), consists of five courses: Decoding Disruptive Technologies, Crafting a Digital Strategy, AWS Cloud Foundations, Leading Transformational Change, and Implementing a Digital Future. Each of these requires a minimum of 16 hours work, over two weeks. So the certificate would require 80 hours work, over 10 weeks. That is a little shorter than an Australian university semester-long course. This is much larger than the Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA)
recognized micro-credentials which start at about 40 hours study. But it is shorter than proposed in the
European MOOC Consortium (EMC) a
Common Microcredential Framework (CMF), which envisages 100 to 150 hours study.
The first five of certificates offered by AU are:
- Leader Development Program Certificate;
- Essential Skills for Leaders Certificate;
- Digital Transformation Leadership in Cloud Certificate;
- Digital Transformation Leadership in Machine Learning Certificate; and
- Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification™ Training
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