A Pilot Project for Advancing the Teaching Competency of Early-Career University Academic Personnel through Micro-credentials

The early-career faculty members development program for academic personnel with 0-2
years of teaching experience aims to develop teaching competency based on the KMUTT
Professional Standard Framework for Teaching and Learning (PSF) (C4ED KMUTT, 2016). The
program was designed based on the 70-20-10 model, which allocates 70% for on-the-job
training, 20% for learning from peers and mentors who observed the teaching of early career
members, and 10% for formal training (CELT KMUTT). The program was concluded with a
debrief session of mentor observation based on knowledge, activity, and values specified in
the PSF. Approximately 10% of 128 early-career faculty members were found to have not
presented at least one component in the PSF. They also expressed the need for personalized
learning according to the competencies that they are still lacking.
The early career faculty development program was redesigned to cope with the challenges
above by incorporating the concept of micro-credentials (MC). MCs are widely used in
professional development to assess specific competence achievements. It provides
standalone value and offers self-determined learning (Hunt, Carter, Zhang, & Yang, 2019; T
Msweli, Twinomurinzi, & Ismail 2022; Yu, Dyjur, Miltenburg, & Saito, 2015). The development part
of the program remained the same. The evaluation part, which used to be the mentor
debrief session, was changed to submitting the evidence through two micro-credentials
designed to cover competencies specified in PSF within 1 year after the program started.