SkillsCommons Support

What is TAACCCT?

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Opportunities to Improve Quality and Innovation in the TAACCCT Program

BACKGROUND: The Department of Labor has invested about $2,000,000,000 in community college programs to accelerate and innovate their workforce development programs for job-driven skills within the TAACCCT (Trade Adjustment Assistance for Community Colleges and Career Training) grant program.   The new online and hybrid instructional materials and program support materials are required to have a Creative Commons license (CC BY), be accessible, be interoperable, and be developed with quality assurance processes including evaluations by industry subject matter experts.   SkillsCommons.org is designed and managed by the California State University and its MERLOT program for the U.S. Department of Labor’s TAACCCT Repository under a 4 year cooperative agreement. The CSU-MERLOT strategy is to develop SkillsCommons.org services to:

  • Capture and preserve instructional and program support materials produced and/or used by TAACCCT grantees to deliver their innovative workforce development programs.
  • Enable discovery of the SkillsCommons.org materials, so others can easily reuse them to accelerate and expand access to workforce development programs.
  • Build communities with members from higher education, industries, and local, regional, state, and national organizations to assure the quality and growth in the collection of free, open, reusable, and effective instructional and program support materials.
  • Build sustainable organizations and services enabling the longer-term returns on the TAACCCT investments.

With over 700 institutions contributing to the repository, the open library of materials at SkillsCommons.org will expand over the next few years. New features are being developed that will allow end-users to better preview courses and materials in the repository.

Prospectus of the market opportunities with TAACCCT grantees:

  1. Market size – about 550 community colleges are still actively working in the TAACCCT program.  About 150 community colleges have completed Round 1 of funding.
  2. Funding awards to campuses: average $3 million per campus over 4 years.  View Map of Funding per State for rounds 1-3.
  3. Where to get more information about the awards:
  4. Job-driven training for workforce development is White House priority
  5. TAACCCT Project Directors, who can make purchasing decisions, and TAACCCT project members (e.g. faculty, instructional designers, project managers, industry liaisons, and more) will be participating in the special TAACCCT track at the INNOVATE Conference.
  6. SkillsCommons has produced Examples of Makeovers.
  7. A study in how several community colleges work with local industry partners to create market alignment and uncover the social outcomes within their communities.

Non-grantees can adopt/adapt the TAACCCT OER for their programs as well and can want vendors to reuse and revise the TAACCCT resources for their goals.

  • Reuse is a goal of the TAACCCT program and SkillsCommons
  • Reuse will involve a “makeover strategy” for revising OER to meet local needs
  • SkillsCommons will enable and facilitate the makeover strategy