McKinsey, a global management consulting firm, predicts that up to 375 million workers worldwide must acquire new skills or upgrade existing ones by 2030. The European job market has undergone significant changes, and social and technical transformations have led to the demand for more agile forms of education and more opportunities for lifelong learning to broaden and develop knowledge and skills. 

Microcredentials have become one of the 12 points of the European Skills Agenda as a result of positive learning outcomes achieved through short courses or training. They have become a key element of the European Commission’s strategy to create the European Education Area by 2025. Michał Nowakowski, leader of the project “Microcredentials – Piloting a New Solution To Support Lifelong Learning” implemented by the Educational Research Institute (IBE), talks about the specifics and the role of microcredentials, and how they can be used in the Polish education system. 

Microcrenentials.pl: For years you have been building in the public space an image of microcredentials as a tool for qualitative validation of competence development in learning. Today, these interests have gained real opportunities for implementation thanks to a project you are leading at the Educational Research Institute. From your perspective, how has the perception of microcredentials changed over the years? 

Michał Nowakowski: I first learned about the concept of microcredentials in 2014. I admit it with some embarrassment today – I was sceptical about it at the time. This was mainly due to my, rather superficial, assessment of their actual potential. However, my inclination to form a definitive opinion on a subject after thorough research has prevailed. After ten years of dealing with microcredentials, I can already tell that those who are most sceptical about them are those who have not taken the time to understand their concept. When you delve deeper into it, you realise how microcredentials can impact every aspect of our life and where their potential lies. This potential includes, among other things: developing one’s skills in accordance with one’s experience and needs, gaining valuable confirmations of skills needed in the job market, and being able to place one’s educational achievements in development paths which make it easier to track progress, both personal and professional. It’s also about step-by-step gaining and validating your skills in stages, using microcredentials to create a digital CV and, very importantly, keeping you motivated. Studies have shown that microcredentials have great motivational potential – they may lower the rate of course dropouts and make it easier to take up learning after a break. Microcredentials collected in one place, digitally, e.g. on an app, show the users what they already know, and this may provide a very positive incentive to undertake further work.

Today, many people involved in education believe that microcredentials are the future. It is therefore not surprising that it is the Educational Research Institute, which has been researching trends in this area for years, working at the interface between education and the job market and supporting skills development, that is leading a project related to creating microcredential standards in Poland. We are not only developing and testing tools for issuing and collecting microcredentials, but we are also promoting them. The tool I mentioned is the Odznaka+ app we have developed, which is completely free and the first one of its kind in Poland.  

Microcredentials.pl: The project “Microcredentials – Piloting a New Solution To Support Lifelong Learning” implemented by the Educational Research Institute in October 2023 is distinguished by its scale. Our microcredential initiatives are being recognised in Europe and all over the world. What is the main strength of the project you are running?

Michał Nowakowski: I can think about two highly relevant aspects – both show our uniqueness on the international stage. Firstly, our project is one of the few in the world that is being developed on this scale in the public domain. In the USA or Canada, for example, it is private companies that are involved in providing digital solutions for issuing, storing and sharing microcredentials. In the Netherlands and Ireland, similarly to Poland, microcredentials are also being set up in public domains but, compared to us, these countries are not conducting such extensive pilot projects. We, from the very beginning, address the results of our work to everyone, universities, schools, companies or individuals interested in certifying their skills. 

Secondly, our project involves four teams of experts responsible for specific areas. In this way, we deal with the issue of microcredentials from A to Z. The first group of experts is in charge of developing the standards for issuing microcredentials to guarantee the highest quality. The second team is conducting pilot projects, i.e. establishing cooperation with various institutions that test our solutions and share their feedback with us. A third group is working on improving our innovative tool for issuing and collecting digital microcredentials, the Odznaka+ app. Finally, the fourth team of experts focuses on communication about microcredentials and their role in different areas of life. This demonstrates we are involved in every aspect of the implementation of microcredentials in Poland.

Microcredentials.pl: The European Commission predicts that by 2030 tens of millions of Europeans will have acquired microcredentials. McKinsey even talks about the need for more than 300 million workers to upgrade their skills. The IBE pilot project, however, only emphasises the ICT area. Why?

Michał Nowakowski: We aspire high because we realise the potential that microcredentials, especially digital ones, have in almost all areas of life. There are nearly 60,000 issuers of over one million different microcredentials in the US. Research conducted by one of the largest certification platforms in the US, Accredible, shows that 1,700 organisations issued 1.7 million digital microcredentials in the first half of 2022 alone. Perhaps not on such a scale, but we also face a great challenge. In a broader perspective, we aim to make microcredentials accessible to everyone. However, during the stages of defining standards, piloting, testing tools, etc., the emphasis should have been on a particular group. The ICT industry is in many ways ideal for us as it is generally not afraid of the use of digital tools and technology. We value this cooperation very much because it gives us a very good opportunity to test whether what we are developing actually works. In the future, we will expand our project to other industries – for now, I cannot reveal which ones. 

Microcredentials.pl: The picture of the project that you have described suggests that we can expect to see several significant activities in the coming months that will be crucial to achieving its next goals. What can we expect to happen?

Michał Nowakowski: Firstly, the first phase of the pilot project will end in late September/early October. This will coincide with the fact that in our Odznaka+ app, it will become possible to issue microcredentials and not just digital badges, as it has been until now. The pilot project participants will thus be able to issue their first microcredentials, which will mark the culmination of this part of our cooperation. It will also provide material for research, including using the questionnaire interview method, which will help us to establish what in the process of creating and issuing microcredentials they would like to see changed, improved, etc. With the completion of the first phase of the pilot project, the second phase will begin, with more than a dozen new entities from various sectors joining, including universities, foundations, companies, and local government units.

Secondly, we have applied a completely new solution related to the creation of development paths in our app. With the help of these, learning and competency paths can be laid out by the issuers and then subscribed by the users. Each path is built from specific microcredentials or digital badges that together form an incremental map of skills. In the latest release of the application, we have abandoned the free workspace mechanism in favour of a standardised, hierarchical tree. Each pathway uses common UI solutions, so users quickly learn to read and navigate them. The options to collapse tree branches, change the display of data or zoom in and out allow you to focus on the part of interest, while the intuitive drag-and-drop operation makes it convenient to build paths for the issuers. 

Thirdly, there are a number of important developments ahead of us concerning the promotion of microcredentials. In October, there is going to be a meeting – ‘Microcredentials For All – a Development Strategy’ – which will be attended by representatives from ministries, universities, education-related organisations and NGOs. It aims to discuss what we have already managed to do and what we plan to do in the coming months, and above all to work out a long-term strategy for the development of microcredentials in Poland. We also have an international conference coming up, which will bring together representatives of many international organisations. 

Although microcredentials are only recently becoming a more widely discussed topic in Poland, they are already well-known around the world. It is a great success for us that even in countries with already very advanced systems for issuing microcredentials, our project is generating interest. Our social media profiles are followed by people from five continents, we receive messages from representatives of various organisations from all over the world, requesting to participate in an event we are organising, to interact and exchange experiences. This shows not only that the project is up and running, but also that the potential of microcredentials is at least as great, if not greater, than our aspirations I mentioned earlier.

* The Educational Research Institute (IBE) has been implementing the project ‘Microcredentials – Piloting a New Solution To Support Lifelong Learning’ since 2023, co-financed by the European Union under the European Funds for Social Development Programme (FERS).

* Michał Nowakowski – software development leader in the project ‘Microcredentials – Piloting a New Solution To Support Lifelong Learning’ conducted at the Educational Research Institute (IBE). Graduated in law from the University of Wrocław, and studied at Universidad da Coruna in Spain. He specialises in the development of workplace competencies, microcredentials and the use of new technologies in education. He has been providing training on management, leadership and motivation in the workplace for 10 years. Having worked as a manager and expert in many national and international projects, Mr Nowakowski is also a member of the Programme Board of the ‘Forum for Intelligent Development’ foundation, an expert of the Future Industry Platform foundation and the Microcredential Team in the area of higher education of the Minister of Education and Science. In 2022 he was honoured by the Minister of Climate and Environment for his contribution to the development of the hydrogen economy in Poland. Laureate of the List 100 of the Broad Alliance for Digital Skills in Poland in the 2023 edition.