The OpenEU office of the FernUniversität in Hagen held a successful Staff Week from 9-12 March 2026, focusing on the theme of Microcredentials. Academics, administrators and other interested parties made the journey to Hagen from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, bringing their burning questions and curiosity and contributing to what proved to be robust and action-oriented discussions.
FernUni rector Prof. Stefan Stürmer opened the proceedings on Monday morning at the historic Villa Bechem where, he recounted to those present, the decision to establish the FernUniversität was first sketched in the kitchen back in the mid-1970s. And now, with the golden jubilee embers still aglow, the FernUni is celebrating a new chapter of success as the first tentative outputs of the OpenEU project start to make their mark.
Continent-wide, the theme of microcredentials has been in the higher ed lingo for close to a decade, yet there remain many disparities in what different parties understand by the very term and thus what it truly means in earnest when institutions discuss, develop and deliver the courses.
George Ubachs, Managing Director of the European Association for Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) explained that the initial idea as posited to the European Commission in 2017 was for a microcredential to be a small yet substantive qualification that would join the established trinity of bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees. “The concept has since been somewhat watered down,” Ubachs lamented in his presentation which was given to over forty in-person attendees and around thirty participants watching from afar via the Zoom stream.
For some institutions, any short learning course might be deemed a microcredential — as long as some ECTS points are awarded. For others, microcredentials are more aligned with practical skills that are in demand in the labour market, and the courses may even be developed in cooperation with stakeholders from industry. And, to further muddy the waters, many institutions across the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) offer microcredentials without necessarily using the term at all.
Matters of harmonisation, mutual recognition and alignment with established frameworks dominated the discourse in the various Staff Week sessions.
FernUni Open EU Project Manager Sebastian Lauritz said, “In our work package — Lifelong Learning — one of our deliverables is the establishment of a joint microcredential ecosystem. It’s a tall order, because students, teachers and other societal stakeholders are largely unaware of what institutions have in mind.”
Dr Eik Gädeke from the Chair of Lifelong Learning concurred. In his presentation entitled Institutional Boundaries and the Governance of Microcredentials, he explained how different countries have embraced the microcredential movement with varying degrees of commitment, with some countries already operating under an established framework, and others — Germany amongst them — bringing up the rear.
At a time of volatility, when technological, economic and political changes are shaking up society and banishing the ‘business as usual’ mentality, additional qualification pathways are necessary to allow students to upskill and reskill as needed. Instead of having these bite-sized courses be standalone experiences, the move within the EHEA — and most certainly the OpenEU — is for the development of stackable and portable microcredentials, thus facilitating the recognition of prior learning should students wish to pursue a degree proper having already accumulated some ECTS.
In a Staff Week programme packed to the rafters with engaging themes, Dr Prue Goredema impressed participants at the Tuesday plenary session when she shared a model for virtual exchange that could be adopted by other OpenEU alliance partners who are seeking to integrate more collaborative online international learning in their courses. The course AI for Learning Virtual Exchange will launch as an (initially) ECTS-free pilot on 1 April 2026, bringing together students from the FernUniversität and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Spain). With further such courses already in development at studyFIT, there is much enthusiasm about being pathfinders for alliance partners to emulate.
All in all, the 2026 FernUni Staff Week has been a marvellous success — from the open sessions to the closed boot camps — not to mention the hospitality segments that saw participants taking in art at the Osthaus Museum; tasting the culinary delights at the Elbershallen complex in the Hagen CBD; and oohing and ahhing at the fossils and finds at the mini natural history museum at the Werdringen moated castle on the city’s outskirts. Mareike Weiss and the rest of the organisational team are to be commended for a job well done. All these efforts — in ways great and small — are helping to shape the microcredentials of tomorrow.
Leave a Reply