Discovery Series Presents:

Topic: Charting New Pathways to Academic Credit with Mesocredentials
Speaker: Dr. Rob Moore, Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at the University of Florida and the Director of the IDEATE Lab in the Institute for Advanced Learning Technologies

Abstract: Massive open online courses (MOOCs) reach millions of learners but have struggled to gain a foothold within the larger higher education landscape. The critical questions about MOOCs remain: What do learners get for completing a MOOC? How does MOOC completion support learning or career goals? This session presents an innovative approach to answering these questions: connecting MOOC-based learning to academic credit through mesocredentials (Moore, 2022). Currently, there are 50 mesocredential programs offering learners academic credit after completing a defined series of MOOCs. What is a mesocredential? How are mesocredentials different from microcredentials? How can these programs be used to provide transformative pathways? What are future research directions for mesocredentials? Dr. Moore will cover these and other questions regarding implementing this pathway to academic credit.

Bio: Dr. Rob Moore is an assistant professor of educational technology at the University of Florida in the School of Teaching and Learning and director of the Investigating Digital Ecologies to Advance Transformative Education (IDEATE) Research Lab in the Institute for Advanced Learning Technologies. How do learners succeed in an increasingly complex and interconnected world? Dr. Moore’s research attempts to answer this question through focused research on engagement, digital ecologies, and learning analytics. Studying learner relationships in digital ecologies means examining structure and engagement to inform actionable strategies to improve learning experiences. He explores these relationships through learning analytics to identify patterns in learner behavior that can influence learning design.