Project Description:
The U.S. Department of Labor’s (U.S. DOL) Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program is a major investment to increase the ability of community colleges to address the challenges of today’s workforce. Materials stemming from the 256 projects are designed to help workers eligible for training under the TAA for Workers program, as well as a broad range of other adults. The SkillsCommons open repository was designed to curate and allow educational and training providers to leverage the thousands of materials created by this nearly $2 billion national initiative.
Deliverable:
Institutional Challenge:
Through TAACCCT, community colleges developed or redesigned nearly 2,600 Programs of Study to help adults learn skills that lead to family-supporting jobs. Each college or consortium of colleges developed programs of study aligned with local and regional business needs, which were identified through partnerships formed or strengthened with grant funds. To help adult students obtain industry-recognized credentials more quickly, colleges used TAACCCT funding to innovate with strategies such as career pathways, credit for prior learning, competency-based models, online training, and strong student support systems, and the curriculum and other learning materials needed to be widely available to all types of training providers.
SkillsCommons Solution:
SkillsCommons provided U.S. DOL orchestrated collection and curation services for thousands of open source educational resources designed to train adults for occupations in 16 high-demand fields including manufacturing, healthcare, energy, and information technology. The repository’s design makes these vetted resources available to all training providers. Users can search by sector, material type, or credential, and do not need an account to access and immediately begin using this powerful collection of workforce and educational training materials.