Claire Sullivan begins speaking at 0:00: Alright, so you probably all received the mini grant proposal that was sent out in the newsletter and it’s been circulating on your campuses. If not, just reach out and we will send it to you. The mini grants are for up to $10 thousand. You will complete your proposal form with a budget and budget rationale, and the due date is five PM Monday, October 17th. All mini-grant micro-credentials will follow the same three levelled framework. And you don’t have to put in your proposal how your micro-credential will fit within that framework because that is what you will do during the training. The proposal itself has been simplified. It shouldn’t take you that long to complete. But just to let you know there is this three-level framework that all the micro-credentials fit within.

 

Our level one training, and I’ll talk a little bit more about the training in a few more slides later. You would want do that. In the level one you’ll learn about the framework and you’ll learn about some of the fundamental requirements for the Micro-Credential Initiative overall. So that’s the framework we take the learner just so you know, for now, there’s foundational learning and level one, level two is more rigorous training, and then it all leads to level three, which is application in a real-world experience. So it could be an internship or it could be something else, experiential learning opportunity. So the, all the mini-grants I saw, went through this that competency-based. So there’s no need for you to have a fully developed micro-credential plan when you apply. The training will take you through that.

 

The priority topic areas. It’s hard to see anyway, but this is on the description. These come from the two reports that are on the next slide, that are the state reports and plans. So renewable, clean energy, climate change, business, e-commerce, DEI, teacher education, entrepreneurship, innovation, healthcare, and any of the topics that you can justify that has a workforce development focus will be fine. So these are the two reports that you should reference it in your proposal. And if they are not part of those priority areas, then you would build your own justification for workforce development through your own facts and statistics. I think it’s a good idea for you to let us know your topic area before because they can be others across the system that are working on a similar topic area and we can connect you. And if you’re having trouble finding collaborators, we can also help you with finding collaborators across the system. So you will have a development team and it will, collaboration is a big part of the Micro-Credential Initiative. So having collaborators across the system, even if it’s just one other campus is important. We can help you with that, locating some people if you need that, if it’s a very unique topic, let us know because there’s sometimes some flexibility with the collaboration and how it will come to be. You also might want employers or state agencies involved in your micro credential. So it’s really up to you, but think about collaboration as a key component.

 

You have your development team. Everyone on the development team must complete the training. So you think carefully about the time commitment for training and who’s on your development team and who can make that commitment. You may want to have advisors, which we’ll play another type of role. And your advisors would be people who are maybe help with some editing, give you some feedback. Maybe there’s some subject matter experts in certain areas. And so they can be part of the team, the overall advisory group, but would not be required to complete the training. And it is optional on, on your application to specify for the advisors would be. You’ll also have opportunities to add people as you move along the Micro-Credential. But just getting a collaborative team initially will be important. So we will ask for primary contact and that person is the one we communicate the most with. The person who would do some work in submitting parts of the training documents and requirements in there. They would also be the person who, if funded, would give us the financial contact so that we communicate most with the primary contact.

 

The team would select your target audience. So if you’re thinking, well, who is this going to be for, is it going to be a cohort of people. How are we going to recruit? It’s really up to the team who you’re targeting. So you would be thinking about adults or community members. You might have a special population within the adults and community members that you’re focusing on. Some Micro-Credentials are geared to youth, middle-school and above – age 13 and above. University of Maine System students, University of Maine System employees or alumni, or just other targeted sub-populations that you’re thinking about. But the team decides on the target audience and it will ask you in the proposal, who, who is your target audience.

 

A little bit about the training. It is set up the same way as the Micro-Credential is. So you would be receiving a Micro-Credential along the way. So you would earn badges along the way. So you get that feel of what it is like to receive some of the badges and what to do with them and how it would be for your learners. So level one is open to everybody and anyone, we recommend that you take it even before you submit the proposal. But you certainly would need, if you do get funded before funding is released, to complete level one. And level one just goes through the basic framework, the levels and then some of the basic requirements. There’s a ten question quiz and you write a short reflection. And then once you receive a that of ten or better on the quiz, you would earn your level one badge. So it only takes about an hour to complete level one. And like I said, anybody can do it. Levels 2 and 3 are only open up to development teams. So once you confirm your team, everyone’s completed level one, they would get put into level two. And that is where we do the how to create a Micro-Credential training.

 

We work with backward design – you start with the skills and competencies. What would you want your learners to end up knowing and being able to do at the end of the Micro-Credential. And then you go through a series of assignments. And then at the end of it, of level two, is the metadata template. So we have a template and you put in the basic information for each badge. So it would be the description of that level, the criteria needed, what does the learner need to do and what do they need to submit as evidence? What evidence do they need to submit? What are the assessments? How is it aligned to a standard? We’d take you through that process. So, we help you get there and then you would write that up in a draft form. It’s submitted. I read it. And there’s usually some back-and-forth getting the wording right. It’s just want the wording to have a similar focus on, on all the micro-credentials together. There’s a little bit of back-and-forth typically. And then part of that metadata template is the creation of your badges themselves.

 

They would look very similar to what you see here with the three levels and the final macro badge, the stacked badge at the end. You can also have what we call micro badges. Not many have included micro badges in the way that those are more granular badges that can be put within, embedded within the pathway. Once again, the training, will go over that information. And then level three is, the focus of that, is how to issue badges and how, how to market your micro-credentials. So we take you through an infographic. So by the end of it, you would have an infographic of the benefits for that micro-credential for your audience. And you’d also have, we have a template for what to include on your own websites to advertise the micro-credential. Right in the process now of having an e-commerce site being developed. So if you have your micro-credentials on Brightspace, if you have the content on Brightspace, who can be part of that e-commerce site that would also market your micro-credential. So other requirements and expectations, we watch it go through that training in a timely manner there you can take a look at that timeline.

 

And in Appendix A, we want the level one training to be, like I said, before, the funding is released to be completed by the development team. Advisors can take this level one training because it is open to anyone. Then you would be Funded Teams. We would ask you for some feedback along the way and provide some updates. So we mostly contact the primary contact for it. Then we would ask that you put the content in Brightspace to have that connection with the e-commerce site.

 

Selection criteria is pretty straightforward. A clear description of the purpose, explaining your ties to workforce and economic development, a clear rationale, mutual benefits to learn, and a clear budget rationale. Like I said, you do not have to have “this is level one, level two, level three” completely planned out. The training will bring you through that.

 

You submit your form on or before October 17, 5 pm and you can contact us with any questions you have along the way, your ideas we’re here to help. We want you to submit a successful proposal. We will definitely answer any questions you have along the way.