Toward AU Validated Micro-credentials to Address Regional Construction Workforce Challenges

Alternative credentialing, more commonly known as micro-credentialing is “industry-aligned short units of learning that are certified or credentialed and they can (mostly) stack or count towards a higher education qualification” (Wheelahan and Moodie 2021) and are also found to be “additional, alternate, or complementary” to a formal educational qualification (Oliver 2019). Typically, they have been found in vocational education, but have now moved toward policy concerning higher education according to Wheelahan and Moodie (2021). Researchers have found that learners want short, practical, up-to-date courses for their chosen career paths, while employers are demanding people with actual skills and not merely paper qualifications as they can shortlist candidates based on their micro/digital credentials (Varadarajan, Koh and Daniel 2023). As anecdotal evidence of this, at a recent career fair, one of the research investigators recalls an employer saying that all they needed was someone who could proficiently manipulate MS Excel and they would be hired on the spot.

Understanding that workforce shortages are a big concern in the construction industry and having knowledge and experience with micro-credentials, broadly, the investigators propose to determine if and how micro-credentials can aid in meeting the workforce challenges of the regional construction industry by answering the following research question as the main construct with an array of sub-questions to draw out industry perception and needs for alternative credentialing.