micro-credential
Digital Leadership
Do you want to rethink leadership—making it virtual, collaborative, and user-centered? This Micro Credential shows you how to lead digital teams, shape IT transformation, and put user needs at the center. You’ll learn to facilitate virtual collaboration, understand group dynamics, and develop digital solutions for a modern workplace. Build your digital skills flexibly while balancing your career and daily life.
Find continuing education
From MBAs and courses to certifications.
This micro-credential bridges the gap between creativity, digitalization, and business, enabling leaders in digital transformation to understand remote work and remote learning and to lead remote teams.
This micro-credential in the field of “Digital Business” can be earned as part of an existing FERNFH degree program or as a standalone short program designed exclusively to lead to this qualification.
This micro-credential is offered as part of theInformation Technology | Master's program.
Courses
- Digital Transformation and the Digitization of Business Processes (3 ECTS, Winter Semester)
- Group Dynamics & Organizational Development (3 ECTS, Winter Semester)
- Virtual Work and Learning (3 ECTS, Winter Semester)
- User Experience & Information Design (3 ECTS, Summer Semester)
Skill development
Upon successful completion, students will be able to …
- to leverage the concepts and interconnections of digital transformation.
- To assess the impacts and opportunities of digital business models.
- Interpreting challenges in the workplace, within organizations, and regarding compliance.
- Explain the analytical logic behind user-centered design.
- apply this knowledge to independently identify and solve practical problems. (Design is understood here as a participatory process.)
- Present media psychology as the intersection of user interaction, media technology, and culture.
- To carry out media design as an iterative process that involves users.
- Explain the basic design principles.
- to apply selected usability engineering methods in their projects.
- apply theoretical and practical knowledge to their projects, taking into account additional interdisciplinary aspects.
- Group and hierarchy—two forms of organization that are at odds with one another.
- to compare relevant theoretical models.
- To examine the fundamentals of group and organizational dynamics.
- to understand the dynamics of virtual teamwork.
- To outline the necessary framework and success factors for virtual teams, to understand the dynamics of virtual teamwork, and to be familiar with the key roles and responsibilities in virtual teams.
- To facilitate virtual meetings in a focused manner and to understand the substantive, communicative, and organizational responsibilities of an online facilitator.
- Successfully using web conferencing tools (specifically, using MS Teams as an example) in virtual work and learning settings.
- to competently address the challenges, unique characteristics, cultural aspects, and opportunities of virtual communication and collaboration in training and the workplace.
- use common digital channels and tools to communicate and collaborate effectively.
- to understand how machines learn and to create a self-learning algorithm.
Duration of the program: 2semesters
Scope: 12 ECTS credits
Level: 7 – Graduate
Cost: €599 plus ÖH membership fee
Application deadline: July 31, 2026
Start: September 25, 2026
Application deadlines
01. Jan. 1970
Micro-credentials are organized through the degree programs at Ferdinand Porsche FERNFH.
The degree program varies depending on the micro-credential. You can find more information on the pages for each micro-credential.
The EQF is the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF), which aims to “improve the transparency, comparability, and transferability of qualifications.” Programs at the bachelor’s level are classified as Level 6, while those at the master’s level are classified as Level 7.
ISCED-P is the program level to which the micro-credential is assigned in the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED), which is UNESCO’s reference and classification system. In somewhat greater detail than in the EQF, a distinction is made between the“program level”(ISCED-P) and the “level of education” (ISCED-A). A program may be at ISCED-P Level 7 (i.e., at the master’s level), but if it takes less time than the standard stipulates, the person who has completed it has not yet reached educational level ISCED-A 7, but is one level below, i.e., 6. This applies to micro-credentials. This means:
If you complete an MC at ISCED-P Level 7, you may not list “Master’s” as your “highest level of education completed” (unless, of course, you have already earned a “real” Master’s degree elsewhere). The same applies to MCs at the bachelor’s level (ISCED-P Level 6, but ISCED-A Level 5).
Micro-credentials are typically worth 5–15 ECTS credits, which generally corresponds to two to five courses. Once you have successfully completed all the courses that make up the learning path, you will receive your micro-credential—in the form of a printed certificate and a digital badge.
Individual courses must have been completed within a 5-year period in order to count toward a micro-credential.
If you’re earning your micro-credential as part of your current FERNFH degree program:
If you’d like to apply for a micro-credential from your own degree program, you can contact your program directly. For micro-credentials outside your degree program, please apply via the micro-credentials online application page:
By the way: If it’s been a while since you graduated, we’ll count ECTS credits earned up to 5 years ago.
If you are completing your micro-credential as a standalone short program.
To get started with a micro-credential, apply for your specific MC on the Micro-Credentials online application page.
“Recognition of prior learning” toward a micro-credential is only possible for courses that have been successfully completed within the last five years. Examination results from earlier than that cannot be recognized toward a micro-credential. In addition, recognized ECTS credits may not exceed one-third of the total credit hours of a micro-credential.
Conversely, courses from an MC program may also be credited toward a university of applied sciences degree if they were completed within five years prior to the start of the degree program (and if the MC courses are also part of the core, elective, or individualized curriculum of the relevant degree program).
Important:Please note that the exact options and scope of credit transfer may vary depending on the specific degree program. We therefore recommend that you contact the relevant program staff directly for specific details.
If the MC is earned as part of a degree program, the relevant admission requirements apply. MCs offered as standalone short programs are considered “attendance in individual courses”; no formal admission requirements (e.g., completion of a qualification at a specific ISCED level) need to be met for these.
Subject-specific prerequisites (“relevant qualifications or knowledge”) may be required, and proof of fulfillment may be necessary. You can always find the prerequisites listed directly on the respective MC’s website.