Alternative Digital Credentials: UAE’s First Adopters’ Design, Development, and Implementation Part (1)

Abstract

The global skills gap and lack of a verified volunteering capacity for pandemics and catastrophes, amongst other factors, have compelled higher education to consider validated alternative credentials. However, alternative credentials are in the infancy stage, so universities are tailoring frameworks and curricula in the absence of a global standardization. Recently, calls to develop “soft”/non-technical skills like empathy among healthcare students are increasing. However, the current healthcare non-technical skills curricula do not account for the clinical aspects as they have originated from aviation programs adopted since the 1970s after high-profile plane crashes were mainly attributed to errors in non-technical skills. The aim of this paper is to address all these gaps by performing curriculum analysis, design, development, and implementation to lay the foundation for subsequent research to evaluate the outcomes. The developed curriculum was offered in an alternative credential format for a pilot group of seven undergraduate medical imaging students. This paper describes the development and implementation of five pedagogical interventions, and the subsequent paper shall review seven assessment and evaluation tools and requirements related to competency within entrustable medical imaging professional tasks. This paper is unique as we are unaware of any publications on deployed or awarded alternative credentials combining technical and non-technical skills within entrustable professional tasks. As such, the work presented can provide educators with practical curriculum development approaches to address the educational paradigm shifts.