NTU Leading the Way: Transforming Learning, Teaching & Scholarship Through Micro-Credentials

Back in 2022, the Centre for Academic Development and Quality (CADQ) identified an opportunity to further enhance NTU’s learning and teaching staff development portfolio by seeking to design and deliver a suite of micro-credentials.

This innovative approach to professional development, which we believe is a first for the sector, will empower NTU colleagues to shape their own professional development, ultimately enabling them to construct a pathway to explore their own learning and teaching professional development.

Offering such an accessible, flexible and strategically aligned opportunity will enable staff from across the university to enhance their knowledge and expertise in a personalised and pioneering way.

Why Micro-Credentials? Why Now?

Higher Education is evolving quickly, and the micro-credential offer represents a significant step forward for the University, providing NTU staff with the flexibility to access training and development when they need it most. Aligned to our strategic direction – to enhance student outcomes and experiences – the micro-credentials project has one vision, that is “to provide NTU colleagues with a pathway to support their continuous professional growth.”

This new approach ensures the individual can select activity that is pertinent and speaks to their desired professional development needs. As short, postgraduate, credit-bearing micro-learning opportunities that are tailored to educators’ real-world professional needs, they have been designed to be completed alongside existing responsibilities. They provide opportunities for colleagues to adopt a critically reflective approach to defined areas of work, whilst equipping them with practical skills to enhance their diverse roles and responsibilities.

Introducing Two New Staff Development Micro-Credentials at NTU

Our first micro-credentials launch in September 2025 and focus on two high-priority areas for NTU colleagues – Enabling Effective Course Leadership and Impact and Evaluation for Educational Change:

1. Enabling Effective Course Leadership: this was prioritised following feedback from Deputy Deans and other colleagues who were seeking progression routes beyond the APA/ PGCLTHE. Focusing specifically on how strong course leadership has a wide-ranging impact on the success of students in a multitude of ways, and directly impacts a positive course experience. The Enabling Effective Course Leadership micro-credential will equip learners to:

• Explore the key responsibilities, best practices, and essential skills required for effective course leadership, from the perspective of current or aspiring course leaders, as well as those more widely involved in supporting them.
• Develop effective communication in/across course teams, and with other stakeholders, recognising the need to influence with and without authority
• Unpack the quality mechanisms which help to evaluate and manage student success, including exploring data and other metrics.

2. Impact and Evaluation for Educational Change: this module recognises the OfS requirements for impactful evaluation and will be instrumental in supporting colleagues with evaluation activity across NTU. Evidence-informed practice supports NTU’s Scholarship agenda and ensures we are building case studies and exemplars to support future TEF submissions, for example. The Impact and Evaluation for Educational Change micro-credential will enable learners to:

• Define and evaluate impact within specific contexts, using data-driven approaches and ethical considerations in educational research,
• Create and critique evaluation plans,
• Identify dissemination opportunities of successful practices, enhancing the visibility and impact of innovative work.

These first two 10-credit micro-credentials are just the start of this exciting development and have been carefully designed with input from key university stakeholders. This ensures alignment with both NTU’s priorities and the needs of staff who teach and/or support learning. Subject to a successful pilot, the plan is to develop two micro-credentials per year over the next three years.

What Makes These Micro-Credentials Unique?

This offer is not just about gaining new skills or meeting a strategic priority, they support the creation of transformative learning communities where colleagues can share, reflect, and collaborate. We are designing an approach that ensures learning can be embedded within day-to-day practice at NTU by integrating several standout features:

• Cross-disciplinary collaboration – Learning alongside colleagues from different disciplines in action learning sets will foster new perspectives and enrich professional development.
• Flexible and accessible delivery – Designed for busy professionals, the 12-week blend of in-person and online learning, offering synchronous and asynchronous elements has been designed-in to suit diverse schedules.
• Authentic assessment – Assessments are designed to be meaningful and authentic, ranging from professional discussions to case studies, stakeholder maps to reports and interactive presentations. Authentic assessment has been a key consideration in the design of the modules, with a strong emphasis on modelling and promoting the use of authentic assessment as best practice.
• Reflection at the core – Each micro-credential encourages critical reflection, ensuring that insights can be directly applied to the individual’s learning context.

Growing Beyond the Pilot: A Pathway to a Postgraduate Award

Micro-credentials are just the beginning! Our long-term vision is to roll out two new micro-credentials per year, allowing colleagues to stack their learning towards a 60-credit Postgraduate Award in Leading Learning and Teaching. This flexible structure allows staff to curate their own learning journey, selecting from a growing suite of micro-credentials that reflect their interests and career ambitions.

As with the pilot modules, we will adopt a phased, co-created approach to shape future micro-credentials by working with senior colleagues, expert practitioners and micro-credential alumni to ensure we adapt and remain responsive to the changing needs of our staff and aligned with wider sector developments.

What Are Others Saying?

Consultation with Heads of Department, Learning and Teaching Managers, and Deputy Deans has reinforced the demand for professional development tailored to staff needs. Feedback so far has reinforced both the desire and need:

“For some colleagues, this is what they’ve always wanted.”

“Course Leadership is an overlooked area—this is a much-needed initiative.”

“Micro-credentials could help me focus on specific areas where I want to grow, like [pedagogical] digital literacy, new teaching methods, and integrating AI into teaching and learning”

And there is interest beyond NTU as well - we have already shared our micro-credentials journey with the sector at the Advance HE Teaching and Learning Conference 2024,  where we explored emerging challenges and identified exciting opportunities for collaboration, and the European Access Network 2024, where international interest was identified. Needless to say, there were colleagues in our workshop who wanted to take the micro-credentials that we are building!

More Than Just a Professional Development Programme!

We see the micro-credential offer as more than just a professional development programme, or another award—it's an opportunity to shape the narrative about how we grow as educators. This innovative approach to professional development will provide a dynamic, engaging, and sector-leading approach to continuous professional learning that is accessible, flexible and responsive to the needs of both NTU and the wider HE sector.

The first micro-credentials launch in September 2025. If you would like to find out more about how NTU are embedding micro-credentials into our staff development offer, please email us at cadq.enquiries@ntu.ac.uk