Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Continuous training will start soon, with issuance of CFUs shared with European partners

Unimore is a state-of-the art university in Europe for teaching innovation with regard to specialist and professional continuous training. A Common Microcredentials Framework, or Micro Specialisations as the Italian name will sound, is what the Network EduOpen of Italian Universities led by Unimore aims to achieve within the European MOOCs Consortium in order to create training profiles that can be transferred and recognised in continuous training.

Designed to meet the students’ request to develop new knowledge, abilities and skills in short courses that are recognised and are of good quality, and may also be used to get the certifications issued by traditional universities, the proposal was brought forward at the recent EADTU-UE 2019 summit held in Brussels, with the attendance of the founder partners of the EMC platform: FutureLearn (GB), France Université Numérique (FR), OpenupEd (EU), Miríadax (ES), and EduOpen (IT).

The intention is to lay the foundations for a new international system of recognised training profiles that can be transferred to European universities in order to meet the students’ permanent learning needs at global level.

Speaking on behalf of EMC, Mark Lester, Director and Manager of Educational Partnerships at FutureLearn, explains that “The job market is rapidly changing and the learning world is changing accordingly. Given that the drivers of technological innovation lead the change at an unprecedented pace, people will need to improve their skills and requalify over their entire life, developing higher skills supporting successful careers. Leaving work for long times in order to get a traditional qualification will be an increasingly less applicable practice in contemporary world, and a new solution taken from the educational sector will be essential in order to meet such emerging need. EMC partners are proud to cooperate with our relevant university partners to try to ensure improved consistency, quality and portability in the Microcredentials we develop”.

To ensure that the courses issuing Microcredentials are built based on high quality standards, the CMF requires such courses to be able to ensure university credits. This requirement ensures that courses are developed within the national framework of university qualifications, and in Europe, in line with the European Qualification Framework (EQF), a shared European reference framework aimed at making qualifications more readable and understandable among the various countries and systems.

“Through the Centro Edunova - Unimore Rector, Angelo O. Andrisano states - Unimore has strongly invested in the latest years of research activity, experimentation and real application of innovative teaching methodologies, featuring the use of IT technologies. Currently the coordinator of a network of 20 state Universities, Unimore is carrying out an important proposing task in Italy as first-mover, and this casts our University in the European scenario with a key role, at the same level of the most renowned continental universities. I would like to point out how proud the entire University is for this acknowledgment that rewards us of the several efforts and investments made to offer a quality training, consistent with the expectations of the Country”.

The courses issuing Microcredentials will aim at being recognisable among the various institutions of high European training and creating an ecosystem in which students may one day gain Microcredentials from a network of universities that may be used for a broader qualification, such as post-graduation courses or master’s degree programmes.

“Within the Italian system - Tommaso Minerva of Unimore, coordinator of the Network EduOpen states - Microcredentials may be seen as short refresher and in-depth courses on specific topics (Micro Specialisations), focused and of high professional value. The network of Universities participating in EduOpen has already started issuing credits through Master programmes and further training in Open mode. Both the job market and the knowledge market though, are increasingly in demand of a more dynamic and specialist training, with focused objectives that can be achieved in a short time. Micro Specialisation courses that will issue Microcredentials, participating in the planned Common Microcredential Framework, will help complete the offer of the EduOpen catalogue on the www.eduopen.org portal. Our partner universities strongly believe in the importance of flexible learning modes, and in our opinion this initiative is a crucial step towards our goal to promote in Europe a more modern, open and flexible higher education system that goes beyond the national boundaries”.

The first Microcredentials as part of this CMF should be ready for the enrolments on partners’ platforms by the second half of 2019.

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EduOpen

EduOpen is the network of Italian universities, led by UNIMORE and the EDUNOVA Interuniversity Centre, for Open Education and MOOCs. It was founded by the Ministry for the University and Research, and started its activity in April 2016. The network is open to all higher education institutions and currently it boasts more than 250 courses offered by over 260 professors coming from 20 universities ( www.eduopen.org ).

European MOOCs Consortium

The European MOOCs Consortium (EMC) is made of the main European MOOC platforms such as Futurelearn, FUN, MiriadaX, EduOpen, and OpenupEd. These partners represent the main MOOC developers in Europe with regard to students and number of Courses, and all together offer over 2000 MOOCs. They represent an extensive network of 250 higher education institutions (HEI) and companies working in various European languages, including but not limited to English, French, Spanish, and Italian. The creation of the European MOOCs Consortium (EMC) speeds up the cooperation between the main MOOC European players and adds value and volume for an authoritative European Movement of MOOCs.

The EMC coordinates initiatives aimed at:

• increasing the awareness and use of digital education and MOOCs in universities, empowering them to integrate it in their organisation.
• increasing the impact of each partner of the platform on the educational policy by taking the lead in this sector.
• strengthening the sector of continuous training by improving MOOCs reliability and visibility.
• converting MOOCs in a widely considered option for employers who try to fill the gaps in terms of economic knowledge and skills, and for employees willing to change their career.

Categorie: International - english