Open Education for a Global Economy – ALISON — Advanced Learning Interactive Systems Online provides free online interactive education to help people acquire basic workplace skills.

ALISON http://alison.com/ offers some 400 vocational courses at "certificate level" (1 to 2 hours of study) or "diploma level" (about 9 to 11 hours of study) and plans to add 600 more in the coming year. Its most popular course, ABC IT, is a 15- to 20-hour training suite that covers similar ground to the widely recognized International Computer Driving License curriculum. (ALISON’s certification is free; ICDL certification can cost over $500). Other popular offerings are project management, accounting, customer service, human resources, Microsoft Excel, health studies, basic study skills, operations management and psychology.

At ALISON, all students receive a learning record, a kind of archive of their response to life’s vicissitudes. Feerick notes: "The record says, ‘I might be 58 years of age, but I’m still learning.’"

By DAVID BORNSTEIN

Full Story: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/11/open-education-for-a-global-economy/