Future-Proof Skills for a Skills-Denominated Future
Multi-Level Competencies Framework
Numerous educational organizations, professional associations, employer groups, and federal agencies have identified sets of past and future soft skills with different focuses and target audiences. Still, Accredicity is the first institution to create a Universal Framework that includes all facets of an individual’s personal life and professional career, promoting a more equitable, skills-driven labor market by matching talent with career opportunities through a common skills language. The language used in Accredicity’s Universal Competency Framework helps relate educational offerings to the exact knowledge and skill terms businesses use in their job postings and used by professionals in their online profiles.
What are the “Future-Proof” Skills for the 21st Century… and beyond?
A skills-denominated competency model might sound futuristic, but the moment to step into that future is now. This future-forward skills-mapping project performed at Accredicity developed a comprehensive framework for translating competencies to a learning model for skills and knowledge. Based on our academic team’s findings and external validation from our literary and industry research, we created a competency model, refined over time, periodically revised, and continually updated to encompass both personal and professional universal skills predicted to be essential in the future in high demand in high growth industries. In addition, seeing the positive impact of those competencies aligning into a common language that employers and job seekers can use to describe their hiring and training needs in the current and future skills-based labor market to match individuals to opportunity more efficiently.
Competency-Based Recognition for Competency-Based Education (CBE)
The basic idea of CBE at Accredicity is for you to prove to us that you’ve learned the required knowledge and skills to earn micro-credentials. Instead of simply measuring a student’s progress by counting the total number of credit hours, competency-based education focuses on the mastery of knowledge and skills. Our work is to identify what skills students want or need to know to succeed in life. Then, we give them the necessary education to fill in any gaps towards achieving success and earning the credentials they need to pursue fulfilling careers in which they can grow personally and professionally and contribute meaningfully to the communities around them.
Stackable Credentials
Earn Micro-Credentials on Your Way to Earn a Micro-Degree
Get a micro-credential in a skill area you need, then another, and another. Each can pay off on its own by helping to get a job, raise, or promotion. Over time, these micro-credentials can add up to a micro-degree. This way, even if you choose not to finish your educational journey, you have something to show for it. That’s what makes stackable credentials so valuable because our program allows you to rack up micro-credentials while on the path to a micro-degree. If designed well, the stackable approach takes advantage of professional development in the workplace and lowers barriers to entry for students to get quality education. You’ll understand its total value and potential when you sit down to update your resume or LinkedIn page. Even before you finish your micro-degree, you’ll have something official to show the world what you’ve learned so far. You’ll realize that all those certificates you earn within a few months have increased your value on the job market and improved your potential to get hired or get a promotion in the future. Because getting value out of an education program means getting a good job, not just a credential. Employers are more open to embracing short-term stackable credentials and pathways. Earning stackable credentials on the way to a professional certificate provides a series of rewards that encourages a student to persist on their journey. Winning early milestones are so motivating. The student will understand how gamified education works for them. This way, even a dropout has credentials to show the progress they’ve made on a certificate. Therefore, even if they don’t succeed at reaching their ultimate goal, they’ll be able to get or leverage their recent education to advance up their career or even get a new job.
Why is the “Stackability” of credentials so important today?
The beauty of the stackable credentials strategy is that it allows you to earn valuable credentials along the way to earning a micro-degree. This way, you are not stuck in a low-paying job the entire time you’re at school. This prevents students from being frustrated or derailed along their educational journey, which sometimes leads learners to abandon their pursuits and goals altogether. Stackable credentials could unlock opportunities for millions of working professionals while not restricting them as active students. This intertwines what were once two opposite paths into one empowering journey. Stackable credentials are the answer for today’s students, who can’t afford to take the time away from work or invest years in completing an entire degree program. Our competency-based program offers bite-size education that enables our learners to gain valuable skills for employers and earn level micro-credentials as they progress toward a micro-degree. This makes shorter-term stackable credentials a clearer pathway for student-worker and a more robust signal for skill-based-employers to the job market. The stackability building from smaller credentials into a larger credential such as a micro-degree allows both employer and student demands to be in alignment. As employees progress in their careers, this stackability of credentials that verify learning of knowledge and skills will become even more critical in the future.
“The pandemic is accelerating this shift to verified credentials. Enrollment in short-term credential classes increased by 70% over last year while freshman college enrollment dropped by 16%.” – (Forbes, 2020)
Why are Verifiable Credentials so valuable?
Many agree that a high school diploma and a college degree are terrible signals of an individual’s full capabilities and potential. Unfortunately, yesterday’s high-school diploma is today’s college degree, a costly new paradigm that has become a significant new barrier to advancement in the pursuit of new career opportunities. Combined with delayed academic progress, prior learning not being credited, and difficulty verifying the skills obtained over your lifetime, many Americans are left in debt, which is one of the main roadblocks to economic opportunity. With a broader acceptance of digital credentials, students would be empowered by giving them ownership over the artifacts of their higher education. This is why at Accredicity, to rekindle the American Dream, we created affordable career pathways to economic opportunities via our Learner Platform to better credential units of learning, reduce friction in talent transactions, open up individual learning pathways, and help our students gain valuable employability skills to help them strive throughout their lives.
“Cred” a New Education Currency
Learner’s Journey to Get Cred
Are you ready to transform your life through education? You can now count your Lifelong Learning with Cred and earn Stackable Credentials from Bite-Size Education. Learners can complete bites and earn levels Tuition-Free. These micro-credentials are the foundation of your courses and programs at A+. Students who want to go further in their educational journey can apply to Accredicity to enroll in a higher education program. Learners’ credentials can be highlighted on a LinkedIn Profile where it becomes discoverable by their professional network, future employers, and hiring managers.
Unique Insight: Education Energy
People learn every day but are not rewarded for it. This is why Accredicity aims to design a credentials platform as an effective solution to transform time and energy into a new education currency. Convert what once was wasted time and energy into career-defining micro-credentials. Learners retain control of their digital credential wallet, and this new valuable education currency leads to credentials that make you more employable in your future career.
YouTube Education
Education happens every day. Our unique insight is that people learn when they use the internet but are not rewarded for their time, effort, and energy. According to Youtube’s research, 87% of users watch videos that help them learn something. Unfortunately, even if we all self-educate on Youtube, universities still waste learners’ time and energy by ignoring personal, experiential, and educational activities that are not done within the confines of an institution of higher education. At Accredicity, we count the education on platforms like YouTube. This new online learning pedagogy is designed to be a more efficient and better fit for your life.
How to tap into your education with Youtube?
At Accredicity, we count the education on platforms like YouTube that you are already using to learn. This type of new online learning pedagogy is designed to be more efficient and better fit your life and current educational habits. By creating a credit, like Creds, that packages and frames units of learning into smaller portions, micro-credentials, like Levels, are opening the door to facilitating greater recognition of learning in real-world learning opportunities. Therefore, you can now value what once was wasted time and energy into career-defining micro-credentials.
Why does Accredicity use YouTube Videos?
67% of the new generation of students self-educates on YouTube
One billion hours of video are watched every day on YouTube
None of it counts for any higher education credentials
Up-to-Date Education from Thousands of Content Creator
87% of YouTube users say it’s important to help them learn
Innovative Platform
What do you want to learn today?
Who do you want to learn from?
How do you want to learn now?
Professional Development Micro-Degree
Why are Personal Growth and Professional Development important?
Do you want to be a better leader, employee, or colleague? Or a better partner, family member, or friend? Then cultivating long-lasting personal growth and life-long professional development is critical in developing yourself, improving your talents and potential, acquiring and enhancing new knowledge and skills to accomplish the results required to seek out ways, at the highest possible level, to succeed in your role, gain career advancement, and better yourself in life in general. Personal growth is connected to your professional development, and they can be recognized as two sides of the same coin. According to a study published in The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, a creative personal action that’s not directly related to work can help employees perform better at their jobs. Both in your life and at the workplace, if individual needs are not met, this can negatively impact your mental health and well-being and, in turn, will stunt your professional goals. Skills development opportunities often help employees feel more valued and competent in their roles. Skills workforce development education and training seem necessary since many employees need soft skills, and very few job candidates meet these entry requirements.
Can Universal Skills be learned?
Yes. Like any skill, universal skills can be learned through education. Upskilling not only gives you a leg up on a promotion or a new job, but these universal skills also have obvious applications in your life, both professional and personal.
Who needs Skill-Based Development?
A wide variety of individuals engage in professionally-relevant education and training to maintain and improve expertise in soft skills and competencies, enhance career advancement, keep up-to-date with new technology and practices, or comply with professional requirements and an interest in lifelong learning.
Why are we mapping curriculum to in-demand skills?
We all know the importance and benefits of earning a degree. Multi-disciplinary programs let you study more than one subject and one time, possibly giving your resume a boost above the rest. Mapping our program curriculum to the in-demand skills in the job marketplace from our Universal Competency Model creates value for our students. Since Universal Skills may be learned through experience and education, our curriculum is intentionally designed to map curriculum to skills within our Universal Competency Model to transform acquiring new skills into an opportunity to develop yourself personally and professionally. Accredicity’s multi-disciplinary approach allows students to choose several courses within a competency model to create a custom certificate program. This will enable students to pursue areas of study unrelated to fostering lifelong learning. By recognizing our learners’ diverse needs, interests, and experiences, our program accommodates a wide range of professionals seeking to meet their personal career goals. Because students will learn a wide multitude of different subjects, graduates in a multidisciplinary program are often quite sought after by many employers, making you more employable and increasing your earning potential in your career. Career opportunities acquired through this program are specific to you and your goals.
Who is a Multi-Disciplinary Program for?
A competency-based multi-disciplinary micro-degree program attracts working professionals who want a well-rounded education to acquire new skills, knowledge, and abilities or improve current competencies they already have, all while following a directed self-paced, flexible, online schedule. This program is also for students interested in starting an undergraduate education but struggles to decide what kind of degree to pursue, don’t know where to start or enter from, and students who want to continue their education but aren’t sure which career path they want are interested in pursuing. Others already have an idea of where they would like their program to take them, but look for a broad program that can be applied to a variety of pathways that might be better for their chosen career. This may include digital native high school graduates looking for digital education and adults returning to school who want to earn credentials or upgrade a wide range of professional skills. This certificate program is a great option.
Complementary and Customizable Curriculum
Employers usually agree that micro-credentials typically supplement traditional degrees since they signal a commitment to skill development and continuing education. Although these credentials can serve as the foundation to hiring a new candidate for a job, these credentials are more often used to recognize the competency or qualification of an individual for a promotion rather than acting as a standalone job qualification. Stackable credentials benefit people who already have degrees and seek additional targeted qualifications as a new pathway into the workforce. As the world of education and we move more into lifelong learning, stackable credential programs are for individuals who have completed college or are looking to get new skills or find a new job. Design your program curriculum from a variety of personalized learning courses organized based on your personal interests and career goals. This will also allow you to create up-to-date programs relevant to today’s career paths. We do this to integrate employment into the student experience from the start. At Accredicity’s undergraduate multi-disciplinary certificate program, students can fully customize the program by choosing their courses to get exposure to a variety of subjects and fields. Stackable credentials benefit people who already have degrees and seek additional targeted qualifications as a new pathway into the workforce. Students think about career opportunities as they select courses within the programs, which requires building skill-based awareness, capabilities, and understanding. Higher education was historically built as a one-size-fits-all industrial approach that fails to serve the highly individualized personal and professional needs adequately. Instead, at Accredicity, the experience is for the learners to customize their curriculum to their career pathway, creating more optimal student outcomes without any burdensome debt.
“One quality of leaders and high achievers in every area seems to be a commitment to ongoing personal and professional development” – Brian Tracey
