Micro-Credentials

• 2 Dimensional Design
• 3 Dimensional Design
• AI-Driven Content Creation
• Art History Fundamentals
• Content Creation
• Curatorial Studies
• Data Analysis
• Data-driven Health Informatics
• Editing and Publishing
• Filmmaking & Media Production
• Foundations of Industrial Design
• Health Anatomy
• Product Development in the Internet of Things
• Programming with Web Technologies
• Software Development

Micro-credentials are digital badges that contain data regarding skills, competencies and strengths within a field of study, or through a course stream comprised of existing Allegheny courses. Micro-credential badges are used on hiring and application portals to help job and graduate school applicants rise through the algorithmically-parsed applicant pool by meaningfully tying skills, competencies and strengths gained while studying at Allegheny to needs designated as important to organizations.

A Micro-credential is defined by at least 12 credits that, taken together, develop a set of well-defined skills, competencies and strengths.  Courses used to fulfill a Micro-credential must be completed with a C or better.  Up to one transfer course may be used to fulfill the requirements for any given Micro-credential. 

Micro-credentials are issued twice per year, typically falling on the first business day after February 1st for micro-credentials earned in the fall semester, and June 1st for micro-credentials earned in the spring semester. 

2 Dimensional Design

2D Design equips students with the foundational knowledge to produce a portfolio of works in 2D, whether digitally or in traditional media such as drawing and painting. Students who earn this microcredential will be able to effectively utilize the tools and techniques of varying 2D media toward the production of a body of work.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Identify 2D design techniques that can be applied across multiple media.
• Apply 2D design techniques across multiple media.
• Incorporate 2D designs into a portfolio.

3 Dimensional Design

3D Design equips students with the foundational knowledge to produce a portfolio of works in 3D, whether in sculpture, ceramics, or emerging media areas such additive manufacturing. Students who earn this microcredential will be able to effectively utilize the tools and techniques of varying 3D media toward the production of a body of work.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Identify 3D design techniques that can be applied in multiple media.
• Apply 3D design techniques across multiple media.
• Incorporate 3D designs into a portfolio.

AI-Driven Content Creation

AI-Driven Content creation equips students with contemporary strategies and tools for creating images, video, and text such as prompt engineering and large language model (LLM) model fine-tuning. Students completing this microcredential will be able to generate intentional and consistent results in response to a wide variety of purposes, including artistic and industrial applications.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Create images, text, audio, and video using industry-standard platforms and models.
• Write successful model prompts using platform-specific best practices, to yield consistent, high-quality results.
• Revise model outputs using iterative design practices and AI-informed design tools.

Art History Fundamentals

Students who complete the Art History microcredential demonstrate basic fluency in the language of art history and visual analysis. Students understand major movements in Art History, particularly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and they learn about how artworks reflect, impact, and participate in cultural power dynamics related to race, gender, sexuality, and nationality, among others. Students must take 3 of the 4 listed courses.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Identify and use terms related to art history and visual analysis
• Demonstrate an understanding of major movements in art history, with an emphasis on developments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
• Articulate how artworks and their circulation reflect cultural power dynamics

Content Creation

Content Creation will develop students’ skills in producing images, video, and sound-based content and instructing them on effective deployment through web development and/or contemporary marketing practices.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Demonstrate camera use fundamentals,
• Develop production, sound editing, web development and design tool fundamentals
• Identify contemporary marketing practice

Curatorial Studies

Students who complete the Curatorial Studies microcredential demonstrate basic fluency in terms, concepts, and major historical events related to the curatorial process, especially as it relates to art museums and galleries. Students build skills toward effectively writing about art to non-specialist publics, and participate in a hands-on curatorial project.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Demonstrate an understanding of how artworks circulate in the public sphere
• Demonstrate fluency in basic terms and major historical events related to cultural institutions of display
• Clearly communicate about visual art to develop skills for effectively writing about visual art to non-specialist publics

Data Analysis 

Data Analysis introduces the knowledge and skills that students need to effectively make decisions using varied data sources. Students who complete this micro-credential will have the ability to use the Python and R programming languages to create data visualizations, perform statistical analyses, and train machine learning models that yield actionable insights and support decision-making.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Perform exploratory data analysis and visualization
• Train, validate, and apply machine learning models
• Automatically model and mine text documents
• Deploy visual data analytics dashboards
• Use commercial data analysis platforms

Data-driven Health Informatics

Data-driven Health Informatics microcredential provides foundational knowledge and skills in finding, understanding, organizing, visualizing, and extracting information from health-related data. Students who complete this micro-credential will be able to explore publicly available health and genetic data, and use open-source web tools, Python programming, and Stata software package to learn insights from this data.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Employ database management and software packages to collect, analyze, store, retrieve and run queries on publicly available health data.
• Use industry-standard web-based and computational library-based tools, and bio/health algorithms to process, explore, examine and analyze health and genetic data.
• Demonstrate, articulate and document health information and all the processes by which health data is generated.

Editing and Publishing

This microcredential emphasizes public-facing writing, editing, and ethical publication. The courses have been selected to offer students opportunities to consider the practical skills of copy-editing, publication production, and marketing, while simultaneously learning to give and receive useful and editorial feedback.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Apply writing and editing skills in professional and publication contexts.
• Demonstrate editorial skills by providing written and oral feedback on the writing of their peers.
• Analyze the ethical and social implications of editing and document design.

Filmmaking & Media Production

Filmmaking & Media Production equips students with strategies, and techniques to best utilize contemporary tools in the field. Students completing this microcredential will be able to produce technically advanced films that effectively leverage technique toward expressing an underlying conceptual or narrative objective. 

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Apply standard film and video production techniques and tools
• Articulate tools and approaches employed in filmmaking and video production
• Develop a video and filmmaking portfolio that represents formal, and technical breadth

Foundations of Industrial Design

Foundations of Industrial Design equips students with the foundational knowledge to produce a portfolio of Industrial Design studies prompted by problems generated through the study of commonplace objects and their use cases. Students who earn this microcredential will be able to effectively utilize the tools and techniques of the field of Industrial Design toward the production of a cohesive portfolio of design objects.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Identify industrial design techniques.
• Apply industrial design language.
• Incorporate industrial designs into a portfolio.

Health Anatomy

The Health Anatomy microcredential involves a three-course series that covers terminology and anatomy & physiology. This series may fulfill admissions requirements for graduate programs in nursing, physician’s assistant, physical therapy, or other allied health professions.

Learning Outcomes
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Connect medical terminology to human anatomical and physiological systems
• Identify normal and abnormal anatomical features related to human health

Product Development in the Internet of Things

Product Development in the Internet of Things provides students hands-on experience with creating smart devices using the principles of human-computer interaction (HCI), and user-centered design (UCD). Students will develop and prototype physical devices incorporating industry grade software and hardware such as the Raspberry Pi, Teensy, or ESP32 platforms to design reproducible, manufacturable, technical solutions which respond to and/or supplement human needs.

Learning Outcomes  
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Describe principles of user-centered design (UCD).
• Apply tools that integrate hardware and software consistent with best practices of human-computer interaction (HCI).
• Write and distribute documentation and hardware schematics with consideration of device reproducibility.

Programming with Web Technologies

Programming with Web Technologies teaches students how to develop accessible, aesthetically pleasing, and well-organized websites and web applications. In addition to attaining the knowledge and skills needed to benchmark, maintain, and enhance websites, students who complete this micro-credential will be able to design the user experiences and interfaces for compelling and dynamic web projects.

Learning Outcomes 
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Structure web content using semantic and accessible HTML and CSS
• Develop web applications
• Perform automated testing of web content
• Deploy interactive web applications
• Use static site generators

Software Development

Software Development introduces the knowledge and skills that students need to engineer, release, and maintain software implemented in the Python programming language. Students who complete this micro-credential will have the demonstrated ability to make high-quality contributions to both the source code and technical documentation in software projects stored in GitHub repositories.

Learning Outcomes 
Skills, competencies, and strengths gained:

• Use the object-oriented programming paradigm
• Perform automated software testing
• Setup continuous integration and delivery of software
• Create technical documentation
• Release and maintain software

*Additional prerequisite not in micro-credential requirements.