| The team leader and the team partners need institutional and faculty support, which is given by professional expert services in the partnership: |
| Consult the educational programme administration; |
| Find teaching and learning support; |
| Seek support for Internationalization; |
| Look for IT support; |
| Get support from legal services; |
| Request cooperation from the student administration |
Guidelines
Consult the educational programme administration
New programme initiatives usually have to go through a faculty or university approval process. A dialogue should be started as soon as possible with the educational administrations at central or faculty level, whereby the programme leader and the team are informed about all preconditions and steps to be taken from the start of the programme up to its publication in the respective program guide and its implementation.
Get teaching and learning support
The teaching and learning support services are essential for designing educational formats for a micro-credential programme. They have expertise in course and curriculum development as well as collaborative approaches to this development. Advice from this service will reduce the time and therefore the cost required to design the programme as they are familiar with all aspects of the design to be covered.
Find support from internationalisation services
Internationalization services also have this expertise. On top of this, they are used to international collaboration and to develop staff and student mobility formats in accordance with the curriculum. They are also familiar with all kinds of agreements which are needed for a joint micro-credential programme.
Look for support from IT services
IT services will advise the team on technology facilities to deliver all digital components of the curriculum, including synchronous and asynchronous online delivery and group collaboration. An important point concerns the common platform or learning environment to be used for the delivery of the programme. For pragmatic reasons, the platform of the leading institution is usually used. A new common platform for the delivery of a common course offering is being considered in newly established EUI alliances, but this has not yet proven to be an easy solution (see also section on the educational and technology ecosystem).
Get support from legal services
Legal services have the task of solving all (legal) regulatory issues in consultation with the partner institutions and of converting restrictions into opportunities. This will sometimes lead to adjustments of institutional rules. This can also lead to advice or requests to the central government to change regulations. Bottom-up processes drive government policy in the right direction. Top-down regulation is only relevant if it promotes change processes at institutional level, enabling micro-credential programme teams and teaching staff to develop innovative programmes.
Recommendations
- In order to improve the quality of the programme and reduce the design and development time and the resulting costs, support services should be contacted from the beginning of the programme design, starting with the international and teaching and learning services;
- In general, the team leader will first engage the support services of his university and then try to align and involve the partners in common approaches for which they should seek advice in their institutions;
- Representatives of the expert support services from all partner universities may establish a joint task force or expert group to support the teaching staff in the design, development and implementation of the programme. They can build on mutual expertise and are the point of contact for solving problems.
next chapter: Share a joint vision on the micro-credential programme to be developed
previous chapter: Compose the micro-credential programme team: structure and tasks
back to overview: Models and guidelines for the design and development
of a joint micro-credential programme in higher education
