Throughout the last two years, the Open Skills Network has been a nexus of ideating, researching, and discussing the future of open skills & competencies for learners and workers around the globe. Through pilots, workgroups, summits and more, the efforts of OSN and its members have accumulated into something truly impressive within the education and employment space.
Learning Economy Foundation has had the pleasure of facilitating and contributing to much of this work, from the Spring Skills Pilots in 2021, to the Collaborative Projects and release of the OSN Playbooks in 2022. We’ve met global leaders and innovators in organizations large and small, supporting them in their skills-thinking journeys. Up until this point, these efforts have largely been on a (relatively) small scale, an application-only process to help identify groups best equipped to achieve the goals of these prior initiatives. With the launch of the OSN Community of Practice, we’re opening the doors up to all OSN members.
This Community of Practice, or CoP for short, serves as an open, collaborative space for all OSN members to co-create a future powered by open skills. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the various OSN workgroups, pilots, projects, and showcases, there is a collective body of work and learnings sufficient enough to equip anyone who might be interested with the tools to build impactful, open skills powered solutions.
More than just learnings; the OSN has assembled a community of over 1000 engaged, generous, like-minded individuals across industries and borders, willing to spend their time and energy contributing to this effort. Without them, a true, thriving Community of Practice wouldn’t be possible.
The CoP structure is fairly simple; each session, we’ll start with a brief presentation from an OSN community member to spark ideas and inspiration. Then, we’ll have an open discussion around a series of guiding questions. Last, we’ll split up into breakout groups, to have more targeted discussions.
At the end of each CoP meeting, we’ll synthesize our discussions and action items into a succinct report, to tell the greater story of the CoP. As our work continues, these reports will evolve; video explainers, use cases, real implementations of RSDs, collective funding applications and more, are all tangible outputs that the CoP might produce. These outputs will be driven by the priorities of the group, ensuring shared benefit.
We hope the CoP provides all OSN members with an opportunity to ideate and implement freely, to openly add to the growing body of knowledge and achievements that represent the Open Skills Network.
If you haven’t already, you can join OSN and register for the Community of Practice here. We look forward to seeing you!