Postsecondary-offered Microcredentials in Ontario: What does the Evidence Tell Us?

The opinions expressed in this research document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or official policies of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario or other agencies or organizations that may have provided support, financial or otherwise, for this project. [...] The province is at a critical juncture as government reflects on the success of its strategic investments in microcredentials,4 allocates newly announced funding for program development,5 and considers the details of a proposed quality assurance framework for microcredentials.6 Given the potential long-term implications of the policy and spending decisions government makes now, it is worth revisit. [...] The two goals of the evaluation, as outlined in the invitation, were to determine if Ontario’s microcredentials strategy is on track to meet its objectives and provide insight into which aspects of the strategy are working well and where improvements are needed. [...] This involves identifying and selecting individuals or groups of individuals that are especially knowledgeable about or experienced with a phenomenon of interest … In contrast, probabilistic or random sampling is used to ensure the generalizability of findings by minimizing the potential for bias in selection and to control for the potential influence of known and unknown confounders” (Palinkas et. [...] If the information was not included on the webpage directly linked from the portal, that field was marked “unclear.” The body of this commentary does not report findings related to fields where data were frequently “unclear”; for example, the format of 42% of the microcredentials analyzed was unclear (i.e., not indicated either on the portal or the institutional webpage it linked to) and is theref.