About JSDC and MERLOT-SkillsCommons

The joint goal of JSDC and MERLOT for the collaborative project is to develop and support a job skills development initiative in Tirunelveli district to support specifically women developing the blend of professional communication, leadership, semi-technical, and industry-specific competencies to empower them to obtain employment that produces family-sustainable income.

The global innovation project, “Training & Internship Placement” (TIP), will train college graduates in necessary workplace skills and provide placement in a work-based learning opportunity in Tirunelveli District. The design of the TIP Program is informed by local business leaders working to improve the pipeline of successful employees.

The 30-day program will begin June 2023 and blend both online and on-site training targeted to the specific, required skills for the local industries. The CSULB Foundation projects and JSDC will initially focus on internship opportunities in banking, hospitality, and retail sectors.

TIP training should result in employees being successful in the workplace and will have a high retention rate for the employers.
The employees’ success will result in sustainable family incomes with prospects for professional advancement.
The focus on employment-skills delivered in a short-term program will benefit the participation of unemployed and underemployed individuals and the employers who are looking for quality employees immediately.

“MERLOT and SkillsCommons are enthusiastic about participating in this innovative project where the workforce training materials that have been developed in the US and across the world will be integrated into JSDC’s locally customized Training & Internship Program. We are grateful to JSCD’s leadership for providing such an exciting opportunity,” states Gerry Hanley, Ph.D. Executive Director of MERLOT and SkillsCommons.

“We are truly excited to train young graduates in our district as part of TIP innovations initiative. The project will provide training in workplace competencies, build a pool of “workplace ready” youngsters in our Tirunelveli district, paving the way for gainful employment, ”states Prof. Sowjanya Dharmasankar, Principal Job Skills Development Center.

in 1997, The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT, www.merlot.org) is an international cooperative formed for the purpose of aggregating and making freely accessible high quality online resources to improve learning and teaching within higher education. MERLOT’s organization and services are administered by the California State University and connect higher education systems, consortiums, and institutions, professional societies and organizations of academic disciplines, corporations, and individual members to form a community of people who strive to enrich the teaching and learning experiences with technologies.

MERLOT provides:

An open, online catalog of thousands of online learning materials.
Quality assurance processes for the evaluating the learning materials
Open community tools for its members to manage and personalize their use of MERLOT resources and services
A directory of people with common interests in teaching and learning with online materials across a wide range of disciplines
Technologies for customizing services for our partners
Professional development services for our partners
User-friendly authoring tools to create open educational resources
Leadership opportunities for individuals and institutional to put educational innovations into practice

Visit MERLOT and its Programs

Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2014, California State University and MERLOT designed and implemented the national, open library of workforce programming and training materials called SkillsCommons at www.skillscommons.org. The SkillsCommons library is open for educators, workforce development staff, human resources staff, and individual workers and provides free and easy access to the innovative training materials across a wide variety of industry sectors that can be adopted and adapted for the local use. Learn more...

Partner with SkillsCommons Programs | Visit the SkillsCommons Repository