Research
Higher education can make the world better. I'm trying to figure out how.
That's the conviction underneath all of my research. Whether I'm writing about civic competencies, microcredential governance, or AI-enhanced pedagogy — the question I keep coming back to is the same: how do we design learning experiences that make people more capable, more engaged, and more prepared to contribute to the world around them?
Most of what people learn in college is invisible to everyone but them. My research is about making it legible — to the learner, and to anyone who needs to understand what that learner can actually do.
I'm a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park in Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership. My dissertation focuses on civic competencies in higher education — specifically, how we define them, assess them, and communicate them in ways that actually mean something. In practice, I'm also a program director, a course designer, and someone who builds the tools to put these ideas into action. The research and the practice inform each other constantly.
Current work
Dissertation — in progress
Civic competencies are broadly valuable — most people in higher education would agree with that. The harder question is what to do with them. My dissertation argues that civic competencies need to be operationalized: defined clearly enough that learners can develop them intentionally, and communicated in ways that external stakeholders — employers, institutions, communities — can actually interpret and use. It's fundamentally a question about legibility, and about who gets to decide what good citizenship looks like in an educational context.
Publications
A practitioner argument for expanding how we think about microcredentials — not just as stackable certificates for technical skills, but as a tool for recognizing the cognitive abilities and ways of thinking that higher education is uniquely positioned to develop.
A scholarly examination of how institutions design and implement governance structures for microcredential programs — including review processes, quality rubrics, and the institutional decision-making that determines what gets a badge and what doesn't.
A case study tracing the development of UMBC's microcredential program — from early infrastructure decisions through governance design, badge issuance, and institutional integration. Intended as a replicable model for institutions building similar programs.
Research interests
What does it mean to prepare people for civic life, and how do we know when we've done it?
How do we design learning around what people can do, not just what they've sat through?
The governance, infrastructure, and policy questions that determine whether credentials actually mean something.
How adults learn differently, and what that means for how we design higher education experiences.
How AI is changing what teaching and learning look like — and what that means for educators trying to keep up.
The institutional and policy structures that shape what higher education can and can't do for the people it serves.
I'm always happy to connect with other researchers, practitioners, or anyone thinking seriously about these questions. Send me an email at collin@collivan.com. You can also download my academic CV here. You can also view my résumé here.