From Skills to Signals: Why the Anatomy of a Microcredential Matters
We are in the midst of a meaningful shift toward skills based practices in education and workforce development. Across higher education, employers, and policy conversations, there is growing recognition that what learners know and can do matters just as much as where or how they learned it.
Microcredentials and microcredential pathways are often positioned as one of the most promising ways to make skills visible, portable, and relevant. They can help learners signal competencies, help employers understand capabilities, and help institutions respond more quickly to changing needs. But what is sometimes lost in the enthusiasm is that a microcredential is not a single artifact. It is the result of a thoughtful process.
Behind every badge is a journey.
A microcredential does not begin with a badge image or a line of metadata. It starts with an idea. Sometimes that idea comes from faculty who see a gap in their curriculum. Sometimes it comes from employers who are struggling to articulate the skills they need. Sometimes it comes from learners who want clearer pathways and recognition for learning that already exists. From that initial spark, the work unfolds through a series of deliberate steps.
Those steps often include defining the purpose and audience, aligning with industry and workforce partners, identifying skills and competencies, designing learning experiences, creating assessments, selecting platforms for delivery, and ultimately issuing a credential that is meaningful and verifiable. Each step involves decisions, tradeoffs, and collaboration.
At the heart of all of this work are skills themselves. Defining skills clearly, supporting learners as they develop those skills to a stated level of proficiency, and verifying mastery through meaningful assessment are paramount. Without shared definitions, without clarity around proficiency, and without trusted methods for validation, skills remain vague claims rather than reliable signals.
And no one does this work alone.
Microcredential development sits within an ecosystem. Faculty bring disciplinary expertise and pedagogical insight. Institutions bring governance, infrastructure, and support. Employers bring clarity around skills and relevance. Technology platforms enable content creation, delivery, assessment, and recognition. Learners are at the center, navigating all of it.
Because of this complexity, I often find myself wishing there were a simple way to explain how a microcredential comes to life without oversimplifying the work.
Recently, I was invited by Pressbooks to create a training for their team on the anatomy of a microcredential, from concept to award. They asked for something accessible and engaging, at the level of Schoolhouse Rocks classic “I’m Just a Bill”, but without the singing and dancing (they must have known I have no musical talent).
I loved the request.
So I leaned into the spirit of it.
The result was not only a comprehensive training session that walked through each stage of microcredential development, but also something a little unexpected. Using generative AI tools, specifically ChatGPT for writing and Suno for music, I created an original song, I’m Just A Skill, that tells the story of a skill on its journey to becoming a microcredential. It follows the path from idea, to alignment, to content, to assessment, to issuance. It is playful, quite accurate, and intentionally designed to make a complex process feel approachable. While the song playfully begins with “just a skill,” the reality is that skills are foundational. They are the building blocks upon which microcredentials, pathways, and skills based practices are built.
The song opens the training, sets the tone, and reminds us that even serious systems benefit from a bit of creativity. It also reinforces an important point. If we want skills based practices to scale and succeed, we need shared understanding. We need tools and platforms that support the full lifecycle of a microcredential, not just the final badge. And we need ways to bring diverse stakeholders into the conversation early and often.
For me, this work continues to be about connection. Connecting learning to work. Connecting ideas to outcomes. Connecting people across institutions, industries, and technologies. Microcredentials are one way we make those connections visible, but only when we respect the process and the ecosystem that make them possible.
You can listen to the song here and follow along with the journey from skill to signal. I hope it makes you smile and maybe helps clarify why the anatomy of a microcredential matters.
Note:
The song referenced in this post was created using generative AI tools, specifically ChatGPT for lyric development and Suno for music generation. These tools were used as creative collaborators, not replacements for human judgment, expertise, or values. The content, structure, and learning goals were intentionally designed to fairly accurately reflect the microcredential development process and to support understanding through storytelling. In the spirit of openness and transparency, I believe it is important to name when and how AI is used, especially in educational and creative contexts, and to model thoughtful, ethical, and purposeful use of these emerging tools.
“I’m Just a Skill (The Anatomy of a Microcredential)” by Dr. Lisa C. Young, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
