Our Mission
The SkillsCommons’ mission is to accelerate the democratization of education for all through open educational services and resources enabling individuals, communities, educational institutions, organizations, and businesses to prepare people for successful employment in the 21st century.
Our History
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program created SkillsCommons, the world’s largest free and open online repository of workforce development training and educational resources. The $1.9 billion investment by the U.S. Department of Labor produced a comprehensive collection of workforce-related Open Educational Resources (OER) created by over 700 community colleges across the nation. SkillsCommons’ OER can be found, reused, revised, retained, redistributed and remixed by an individual, institution, and industry for FREE with the proper attribution to the original author of the resources. SkillsCommons is sustained and supported by CSU-MERLOT, a time-tested OER initiative. SkillsCommons will be sustained as a CSU-MERLOT service after the cooperative agreement has concluded.
SkillsCommons.org was designed and managed by the California State University and its MERLOT program. The California State University’s MERLOT and SkillsCommons teams develop partnerships to support the creation and contribution of quality OER across sectors and disciplines and build solutions to workforce development challenges.
California State University and MERLOT
The California State University and its MERLOT program has provided free and open educational resources and services for over 21 years. MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) facilitates an international consortium and community of educators and learners sharing, creating, adopting, and curating free and open educational resources to improve access, affordability, and quality of learning and teaching. With CSU-MERLOT’s launching of its Digital Marketplace Initiative (2004) and Affordable Learning Solutions Initiative (2010), CSU-MERLOT has enabled institutions around the world to save students millions of dollars by providing free access to quality, online learning materials.