September blog: Behind the scenes

Behind the scenes: National co-creation for future micro-credentials

What should you actually take into account when creating a course? Where do you begin? How do you plan learning outcomes, content and pedagogy—and how do you create a course that works for a large and varied target group?

These are some of the questions that we in the YJOP team have worked with during this year. Together, we are developing a course that will support staff at universities across Finland who are considering creating micro-credentials. The idea is simple: to bring together the knowledge and experience needed when moving from an idea to a completed online course, and to make them accessible in a concrete and useful way.

A course created by many — for many

One of the things we appreciate most about the work within YJOP is the opportunity to collaborate with experts from different universities around Finland. This course is a concrete example of that, and of what happens when we co-create across organisational boundaries. We have different experiences, perspectives and areas of expertise. One person has extensive experience in digital pedagogy, another in course design, a third in learning platforms, and a fourth in actually developing and implementing courses. By combining these perspectives, we are trying to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

At the same time, co-creation is not always simple. What should be included? What does the participant actually need to know? What can we leave out? And how do we avoid creating yet another course that is full of information but, at worst, does not help the participant move forward in their own work?

​Our own test groups

An important part of the process has been not only to start from what we ourselves think the target group needs. We have therefore created our own expert groups within our organisations. These groups consist of people who represent the target group we are addressing. They have been able to test parts of the material, respond to the content and, above all, help us see the course from the user’s perspective. This co-creation process has been a way of grounding the course in reality before it meets its actual target group.

It has been valuable to hear comments such as: “The jungle of concepts needs to be clarified” or “Could why, how, who? be reformulated as what, for whom, why?” or, in plain language: “Hey, this is still far too confusing!”

Pilot version in October

The course will cover topics such as pedagogical planning, target group and learning outcomes, course design, digital resources, interaction and assessment. The focus is not only on what micro-credentials are, but on the concrete decisions and considerations that need to be made when creating them yourself.

And perhaps this has also been our own lesson during the work. Creating a good course is not only about technology or about moving lectures online. Of course, it is about pedagogy and structure, but above all it is about starting from what the participant actually needs in order to learn.

The fact that we are developing a course for university staff who want to develop their own course offering is also, in a way, an example of what YJOP is about: creating conditions for continuous learning and new flexible forms of education.

And perhaps the most important part of the process is not the finished course, but the collaboration along the way. When experts from different universities share experiences, test ideas, give each other feedback and together build something that none of us would have had to create alone.

The launch of the first pilot version of the course is planned to begin in mid-October. Stay tuned!

Carina Gräsbeck, Project Manager, Åbo Akademi University
Camilla Stenbäck, Project Specialist, Åbo Akademi University