Master Digital Transformation: Microcredential Addresses Digital Skills in Engineering

When Siemens launches its microcredential, “Expedite - Skills for Industry,” in July, learners will want to tap into a curriculum developed by a company that works with more than 90% of the world’s top industrial companies.

In principle, this sets the standard and raises expectations. The program has been developed in response to observable changes across “the academic and the industry side of the market,” according to Doris Smith, senior director, Future Workforce and Academic Strategy, Siemens Digital Industries Software.

“On the industry side, we saw that companies aren’t going to be able to digitally transform if they can’t find the talent, and there’s both a quantity and a quality gap,” Smith said. “But on the academic side, we’re seeing schools really want to integrate and co-develop, co-brand, co-create credentials and weave those in for an agile change to engineering education.”

A microcredential is a short program focused on a discrete set of competencies. Learners are awarded a certificate of completion or a digital badge to signal they have developed a set of competencies, skills or attributes. The courses are highly targeted and designed to give learners practical skills they can apply directly to the job. Courses will focus on product lifecycle management and trending applications of AI, the digital twin, sustainable engineering and the Internet of Things.

Smith said Siemens brings to the table credentials that have been recognized by accrediting body ABET, one of the largest globally for engineering education. “We think it’s going to be a game-changer for driving change in engineering education,” touted Smith.

One stumbling block for jobseekers is choosing courses that are useful to the employer. Smith, who directs the future workforce and academic strategy at the software division of Siemens, said the Expedite - Skills for Industry credential addresses a disconnect between academia and industry and what Siemens “can do to bring those two worlds closer together and close that skills gap.”

The transcript below is a lightly edited version of the interview Machine Design conducted with Smith at Realize Live 2025, a digital transformation conference for engineering, manufacturing, product lifecycle management, design and IT professionals.

Machine Design: How will this microcredential help learners adapt to emerging tech trends?

Dora Smith: It’s something we’ve been going down the path with as we saw things changing both in the academic and the industry side of the market. On the industry side, we saw that companies aren’t going to be able to digitally transform if they can’t find the talent. And there’s both a quantity and a quality gap.

On the academic side, we’re seeing schools really want to integrate and co-develop, co-brand, co-create credentials and weave those in for a more agile change to engineering education. What we bring to the table are credentials that are now recognized by the accrediting body, ABET, one of the largest globally for engineering education.

MD: What makes this digital badge different from traditional engineering course work?

DS: Traditional degrees or macro degrees may be two-, three- or four-plus-year programs. Microcredentials are smaller and come in various forms—maybe a badge for just a single activity, or it may be a certificate or a certification when you dive for a technical certification. And these microcredentials that we’re building are usually multi-course, around a specific discipline, domain or topic.

The Expedite – Skills for Industry is one we built based on our onboarding method, where we saw we have these intensive five-month onboarding, and how can we really take some of that—for instance: what is EDA, what is PLM, what are industry foundations—and we asked, what are the things you need to understand about some of the emerging technologies, and really tried to weave those to a younger audience.

Engineers on the plant floor — Siemens is rolling out the Expedite - Skills for Industry credential, a four-course, online microcredential that prepares students for industry by connecting engineering theory with practical skills.

MD: How do learners qualify for this curriculum? Do they need an engineering background?

DS: You do not. We really built this as a bridge from academia to industry. But what we find as we’ve rolled it out and have been piloting it over the last few months, is there’s interest and an appetite for that at many levels. Maybe someone who hasn’t even gone into engineering education, but is exploring the pathways and what they might be interested in. But it may also be a student is in their latter years of engineering education and wants to be able to show some additional—we call it “street cred” —of credentials that they’ve gained. It’s really about building that digital skillset and mindset.

But because there’s emerging technologies in it, some of us that are the existing workforce find some value in taking some of those single courses...

One point I’d like to make when you think about the audience for these microcredentials is that you build it with a certain persona in mind, but there may be demand that is even broader than that. For example, a credential that we announced last week—“Design for the Circular Economy (Sustainable Operations pathway)”—got recognized by ABET, an ISO 9001 certified quality assurance agency responsible for the accreditation of STEM academic programs. That was a credential we did with the University of Colorado Boulder.

Interestingly enough, the age range for those who drove that content enrollment was in the 25-45 range, and we even saw a 45-55 age range for some of the courses. These are people in the workforce trying to reskill, some trying to upskill and they’re looking for those topics that maybe can help them find a new pathway in their career or just be recognized in their existing pathway.

MD: How is Siemens aligning the credential with current industry challenges and digital transformation trends?

DS: What we really looked at is our own Siemens needs. I mentioned that we looked at our onboarding methods and what are the gaps that we've seen we had to fill. Over the last year we’ve been workshopping with our customers. It started a year ago at Realize Live, when we invited feedback on the biggest skills gaps and how we can help fill those gaps. Many said they were struggling to transform because they either can’t find the right talent or they don’t understand the depth of the space and the technology. So, we took that feedback directly into the framework that you see in the Expedite - Skills for Industry credential.

MD: Talk about the specifics of the curriculum and how the curriculum bridges the gap between theory and practice.

DS: What we do first when we look at these credentials is get feedback from industry and then from academia. What are some of the things they’ve heard from their own industry advisory boards that are gaps? We look at the learning objectives, the overall goal for the class. What are the specific learning objectives for those courses?

One of the things I’ve done intentionally over the last few years is bring in talent from academia that really understand that rigor and can help us design this as a very strong program. We set those learning outcomes and look across Siemens and, more broadly at times, our ecosystem of who are the subject matter experts for that topic and how do we bring them in, and how do we bring in the use cases of our customers that make that real. We try to teach it from that pedagogy, so that people understand the context and the real-world application of the things they’re doing.

Expedite - Skills for Industry digital badges — The Expedite - Skills for Industry is a new microcredential developed by Siemens. Learners are awarded a digital badge, allowing them to signal their focused knowledge in engineering disciplines.

MD: What is the expected commitment to complete the course? Are classes in person or online?

DS: This program is a fully online, asynchronous program, and it’s delivered through Coursera. It launches in July.

It’s in pilot beta right now. It’ll be out there for any learner around the world. Some will access it directly, some will access it through their corporate learning environments or through campus access.

Each course is an average of about 8 to 15 hours. In total, on average, about 50 hours. That’s what we’re finding from those who have gone through the pilot. But they can take it at their own pace.

MD: What types of projects or assessments are included in the program to verify a practical understanding? How do students demonstrate that they’ve understood and that Siemens can stand behind their new credential?

DS: When we looked at the rigor of this program and how to assess the quality and that they’ve met the learning objectives, we had a real focus on learning experience. I mentioned bringing in that education expertise. We looked at multiple formats because, while we may design this for a certain persona, we know that there might be multiple generations of people accessing this curriculum.

So, we did a number of different things. We brought in live video with subject matter experts who did some avatar-based things. And then we get into assessments, which might be in many forms. It might be quizzes, it might be formative, summative, there might be peer evaluations. We found that that’s a really strong modality. Discussion prompts, fill in the blanks, multiple choice. And then we started getting into some interactive activities and even things as creative as an escape room. So, we really try to give immersive environments that are fun and engaging for that learning experience.

MD: Microcredentialing is a great opportunity for anyone, at any age. But do you foresee this style of curriculum as something that will replace certain certifications or even graduate-level coursework?

DS: For us, the goal here was, how do we meet this need and how do we complement what’s out there and drive change in that method? The challenge that engineering education has is typically that it takes many years to stand up new programs and evolve. If we can bring recognized credentials to bear, they’re going to be able to drive change more frequently.

We definitely are doing this to drive change in engineering education, to augment it, to complement it, but also to provide access to learners that are out to explore. And I hope that creates more pathways for them to even consider engineering from the get-go.

MD: How will you measure the success of your program?

DS: Initially, we want to look for demand. So, is there strong enrollment? Is that enrollment growing? As I seek feedback from our customers, I want to see that they’re adopting and trying to hire from this. But in the end, to have a robust talent pipeline that our customers, our partners and Siemens can have access to, because we know that’s really what’s going to help them drive more digital transformation in their organizations. That’s what we’re trying to get to, so that eventually we have closed that skills gap.

MD: Who are your partners?

DS: Expedite – Skills for Industry is a Siemens credential. It’s been mainly Siemens subject matter experts.

And then we have various other partnerships. I mentioned the previous credential that got ABET recognized with UC Boulder. And so, we’ve looked for some strategic universities that we can now partner with to say, now that we have ABET recognition on a credential, what does that look like? How do we start to embed that in more curricula?

There will be more partnerships you’ll see us announce going forward. We’ve got a number of those that we’re working with, both workforce development organizations and academic institutions.

So, we developed Expedite – Skills for Industry, but we partnered with strategic universities to pilot this. We have 100 students that have just gone through the pilot, have taken their feedback and made adaptations to it. And that’s at about 10 different schools across the U.S. A global pilot will roll out this summer.

Editor’s Note: Machine Design’s WISE (Workers in Science and Engineering) hub compiles our coverage of workplace issues affecting the engineering field, in addition to contributions from equity seeking groups and subject matter experts within various subdisciplines.