Product Development, Validation and Authorisation

And for our listeners who may not be familiar with product development, validation and authorisation, can you explain what this specific micro-credential is about and what it covers?

Yeah, so the micro-credential really just provides very basic knowledge of what it takes to bring a product to the market, sort of looking at those early stages, all that's involved with developing the project through the different stages of development, and then bringing it to the market in its final launch.

And so what this module aims to do is target those individuals that perhaps are working in the industry currently, or thinking about moving to an industry, you know, some industry of manufacturing, for example, and then giving them sort of a broad experience of what's required and sort of the early stages through to the latter stages of your product launch.

Excellent.

So I imagine that there's a fair number of skills and knowledge that will be built up over the duration of this micro-credential.

Because unlike most of our micro-credentials, which are typically about 10 to 12 weeks, this is a much longer micro-credential which runs from September right through until I think about March of the following year.

It's a 24-week micro-credential,

isn't that correct? Yes, that's correct, yeah.

So with this particular micro-credential, we have the format is 30-30-40.

So you would have your MCQ and an essay-based assignment then.

And then in our third assignment, we would have sort of a mini project.

And really that's looking at either a real-world product that is on the market or perhaps being developed for the market.

It might actually be a theoretical product as well if you don't happen to work in the industry.

Then just taking me through the various stages of how that product reached the market.

But you can also focus in with this mini project, focusing on a particular area if you want to do so with that and the intricacies involved in bringing that product to the market.

Okay, so there's a lot of scope for this sort of skills development over this period of time.

You have a bit more, I suppose, leeway to build and the fact that you are working in many instances with a real product, if you're actually working in the industry, that you get to see every step of the way and the various steps that are required in order to bring something to market ultimately and to have a commercialised product.

Exactly.

So the point of the final project is to give you enough time over the, you know, that's why it's a two semester, I suppose, to give you enough time to review all of the materials that would have been presented in our lectures.

And they are all I do a live lecture at the start just as a way of introduction.

And then the rest is recorded lectures.

There's four topics, four main topics of this that need to be covered.

And then after that, students are left to, after another live session, of course, left to their own devices.

Then having been armed with the information from their lectures, they then go utilize the resources that have been given.

to approach the company or develop their own sort of concept if it is a concept type product that they're developing.