Every industry, from health care to high tech, requires the mastery of specific skills to meet new challenges, leverage emerging technologies, and improve company performance. Employer expectations have never been higher.

Many workers are turning to microcredential programs that offer concise, targeted courses to enhance their skill sets and, ultimately, strengthen their professional performance and prospects.

Clark’s School of Professional Studies is now offering microcredentials that focus on skill development in a range of subject areas. For instance, someone may study programming applications using Python software; learn data analytics and visualization; be introduced to health care project management; or investigate user experience (UX) design. Once a person completes a course, they earn a digital badge, which they can post to their LinkedIn profile or electronic résumé — signaling to industry leaders and potential employers their proficiency in that area.

“The tech industry has been a big believer in certificates in all forms, and other industries are starting to catch up,” says Rich Aroian, executive director of microcredentials strategy and corporate outreach for SPS. “Employers are looking to recruit people with certain skills, and the badges are a way to identify that you have those skills.”

“Microcredentials are ideal terrain for SPS,” notes John LaBrie, associate provost and dean of graduate studies and international programs. “We are committed to providing educational opportunities that are responsive to the marketplace and flexible in execution for professionals who are eager to build proficiencies and stay nimble in an ever-evolving economy.”

Clark’s microcredential offerings:

• Are online and asynchronous. A person can start a course at any time — the courses do not adhere to the academic calendar — and proceed through it on their own time and at their own pace. These “rapid-cycle” self-directed courses generally take up to six weeks to complete.
• Are designed with a state-of-the-art learning management system that allows for up-to-date accessibility and ease of learning.
• Can be “stacked.” For instance, you may choose to take four distinct data visualization courses, and upon completion, the individual course badges can be collated into a certificate. The downloaded certificate contains metadata detailing the skills you’ve mastered from those courses.

According to Inside Higher Ed, citing surveys by organizations such as Credential Engine, more than one million unique education credentials are offered across the country by nearly 60,000 educational and other organizations. Ray Schroeder, senior fellow for the Association for Leaders in Online and Professional Education, asserts that microcredentials augment the knowledge and skills obtained through degree programs while supplying an edge to those who are advancing in their careers or responding to workplace demands.

“The truth is that the desired work­force characteristics are changing,” Schroeder writes. “The last century’s model of employees working many years, even decades, at one job for one employer is long gone. As such, one degree will not sustain a lifetime of work credentials. A continuing flow of upskilling and reskilling will be re­quired for lifelong success.”

Aroian notes that with the official launch of the microcredential program, an opportunity exists down the road to develop courses for current Clark students that build essential competencies for workforce readiness, such as effective presentation skills, creative entrepreneurship, and workplace collaboration.

SPS’s microcredential courses can be of immediate benefit to Clark alumni, he says, by providing ways to maintain and refresh the skills they developed during their student days. The program also gives Clark another avenue for connecting with working professionals and recent college graduates who are based in Central Massachusetts and who wish to develop their skills in an efficient and productive way.

The new offerings also will help inform Clark’s corporate outreach strategy, Aroian says, giving companies an added incentive to partner with the University to support their employee-development efforts through an array of options — from traditional degree programs to certificate programs, and now to short-form microcredentials.

Always, Aroian says, the considerations for developing a course will be centered on high-quality content and effective design, and the realities of the business marketing environment. “In short, we want to do this in a way that makes good business sense for Clark, and matches the needs of employers,” he says,