MERLOT Manages OER Site for Workforce Programs

California State University and its Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching program are working to make open educational resources available for workforce training.

SkillsCommons offers 6,000-plus OER resources focused on workforce training, including complete course content and program support materials.

The U.S. Department of Labor has invested almost $2 billion over the last four years in its Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grants. These grants are intended to help community colleges and other eligible institutions of higher education build up programs for delivering training that can be completed in two years or less by workers pursuing employment in high-wage, high-skill occupations.

Currently, 256 institutions participate in TAACCCT. The results of their efforts are turned into Creative Commons materials that can be freely used by others in their own education programs. These are available through the online site SkillsCommons — developed and maintained by the California State University, a bastion of the open educational resource (OER) movement.

Recently, the university system heard from the federal agency that it would be able to continue that work, handled by the CSU Office of the Chancellor and its Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) program.

Right now, SkillsCommons has 6,000 OER resources, with more coming in all the time. Those include complete course content and program support materials. The resources are available for use by any workforce training program sponsored by K–12 schools and four-year universities. So far, participants have developed or revised 2,300 programs of study, according to CSU.

"The CSU is honored to produce this open educational service to support free access to innovative workforce development resources," noted Gerry Hanley, assistant vice chancellor of academic technology services and the executive director of MERLOT, in a prepared statement. "It is another testament to the CSU's nationwide reputation for leadership in OER and MERLOT's worldwide network of peer-reviewed materials."

The collection is available on the SkillsCommons website.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • abstract illustration of a glowing AI-themed bar graph on a dark digital background with circuit patterns

    Stanford 2025 AI Index Reveals Surge in Adoption, Investment, and Global Impact as Trust and Regulation Lag Behind

    Stanford University's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) has released its AI Index Report 2025, measuring AI's diverse impacts over the past year.

  • modern college building with circuit and brain motifs

    Anthropic Launches Claude for Education

    Anthropic has announced a version of its Claude AI assistant tailored for higher education institutions. Claude for Education "gives academic institutions secure, reliable AI access for their entire community," the company said, to enable colleges and universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration.

  • lightbulb

    Call for Speakers Now Open for Tech Tactics in Education: Overcoming Roadblocks to Innovation

    The annual virtual conference from the producers of Campus Technology and THE Journal will return on September 25, 2025, with a focus on emerging trends in cybersecurity, data privacy, AI implementation, IT leadership, building resilience, and more.

  • From Fire TV to Signage Stick: University of Utah's Digital Signage Evolution

    Jake Sorensen, who oversees sponsorship and advertising and Student Media in Auxiliary Business Development at the University of Utah, has navigated the digital signage landscape for nearly 15 years. He was managing hundreds of devices on campus that were incompatible with digital signage requirements and needed a solution that was reliable and lowered labor costs. The Amazon Signage Stick, specifically engineered for digital signage applications, gave him the stability and design functionality the University of Utah needed, along with the assurance of long-term support.