LEARNING SOMETHING, OR NOT LEARNING AT ALL? EXPERIENCES OF DIGITAL OPEN BADGES IN ACADEMIC STAFF DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Micro-credentials have gained increasing prominence in higher education as flexible, competence-based instruments for professional learning, lifelong learning, and responsiveness to labour market needs. While existing research has extensively examined micro-credentials at the levels of policy, system design, and learner participation, significantly less attention has been paid to how micro-credentials are experienced pedagogically by academic staff themselves. Little is known about how institutionally embedded quality practices, including criteria-based quality systems such as digital open badge (DOB) frameworks, function as academic staff competence development within higher education. This qualitative study addresses this gap by examining DOBs as micro-credentials for pedagogical competence development and exploring the learning experiences they generate for academic staff at a university of applied sciences. The data (n = 35) were collected in 2024 from academic staff who had completed an institution-specific pedagogical development programme and earned DOBs aligned with the European approach to micro-credentials. The data were analysed using inductive content analysis. The findings identify four qualitatively different learning experiences: (1) learning together through collegial discussion and shared reflection, (2) learning ‘something’ in a limited or confirmatory manner, (3) individual learning focused on organising and validating existing competence, and (4) experiences of non-learning, characterised by perceived irrelevance or resistance. The results highlight a central tension: although the DOBs were underpinned by transparent, competence-based criteria, documented learning outcomes, and internal quality assurance processes, they did not consistently translate into meaningful learning for all participants. The study contributes to scholarly debates on micro-credentials, professional competence development, and quality in higher education by demonstrating that quality assurance arrangements support trust, consistency, and comparability at the system level, but do not in themselves guarantee pedagogically meaningful learning experiences. By foregrounding academic staff learning experiences, including ambivalence and non-learning, the article offers empirically grounded insights into how ‘quality in the small’ is lived and contested in practice, with implications for the design, implementation, and evaluation of micro-credentials in higher education.