Micro-Credentials by Industry and Government Partners

The Penn State Department of Architectural Engineering (AE) hosts several micro-credentialing sessions throughout the year to complement the AE curriculum and prepare our students for the ever-changing professional landscape of the architectural engineering discipline. We invite our alumni, industry, and government partners to offer micro-credential sessions in their areas of expertise.

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What are AE micro-credentials?

Micro-credentials recognize specific student accomplishments, experiences, knowledge, or skills. They are awarded in the form of verifiable digital badges that students can earn by obtaining a pass grade on an assignment. The students can then share the badges on LinkedIn and other online mediums, as well as incorporate them into their résumés and e-portfolios.

The concept of micro-credentialing follows the principles of competency-based learning, acknowledging participation, knowledge, and skills gained in both formal and informal professional learning experiences. In AE, micro-credentials can be configured in two different ways: (1) broadly focused micro-credentials that expand our students’ horizons and (2) topically focused micro-credentials that augment a specific course.

Broadly focused micro-credentials

These micro-credentials require low-level pre-requisite knowledge and appeal to a broad student audience (i.e., second- to fifth-year AE students and students from other departments, such as civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, etc.). When appropriate, the target audience can be a specific group of students (e.g., third- and fourth-year AE students in mechanical option).

As the instructor of a broadly focused micro-credentialing session, you’ll need to think about how to present your content in a way that AE students will comprehend (typically in a four to 16-hour session). A presentation you give at industry conferences can be a good starting point, but you’ll likely need to tailor the content for an audience that is less familiar with the topic. For this type of micro-credentialing sessions, you may need to provide additional background, context information, and/or take a deeper dive into the fundamentals underlying your topic. To capture students’ interest, the micro-credentialing session must be challenging and relevant to their careers after school.

Topically focused micro-credentials

These micro-credentials are developed to augment one or more specific course(s) in the architectural engineering curriculum. AE faculty teaching the course(s) provides ample background to the micro-credentialing instructor on the prerequisite knowledge the students have and closely collaborates during the content development. These micro-credentialing sessions often become a required component of the existing AE course, where the student participation is guaranteed by the enrollments in the class.

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Why are micro-credentials important?

• Micro-credentials help Penn State architectural engineering students further distinguish themselves from their peers at other institutions.
• Micro-credentials help students communicate the value of new learning experiences to employers.
• Employers value the specificity of micro-credentials because they state exactly what a student knows how to do.
• Our students value opportunities to learn from practitioners in the field.

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Should you teach a micro-credentialing short course?

The answer is YES, if you can:

• help students understand the practical application of theories they are learning in class,
• introduce them to topics that are important in your field—but not typically taught in undergraduate courses and
• help students gain essential skills that would be highly beneficial in their careers after school.

How can you prepare a micro-credentialing short course?

Great micro-credentials have a few key ingredients:

• Engaging content with student involvement during lectures (such as frequent Q&As embedded in the lecture)
• Specific descriptions of the knowledge, skills, or abilities that students will acquire
• Hands-on exercises where students solve a problem or practice a skill
• A deliverable that will require the students to demonstrate their comprehension of the presented content, and an associated assessment rubric to evaluate student comprehension
• Activities, assignments, or reading materials that will allow students to recall or practice what they learned after the workshop

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