Chhimi Dema

Skillshare, an online learning community with 27,000 educational videos on different courses, has helped job seekers and entrepreneurs learn communication skills, Microsoft excel, graphic design and more in the past four months. 

Funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources (MoLHR) launched the learning platform coinciding with the 113th National Day last year.

Of 1,000 individuals enroled in the various programme, 761 participants were active on the platform. The inactive participants are replaced with new applications. Interested applicants can apply by visiting the ministry’s website. 

Leadership and management, marketing, film and video, music, creative writing, graphic design, illustration, web development, user interface and user experience design, lifestyle and productivity are courses available on Skillshare. Unlike Coursera, the courses on Skillshare are not accredited. 

Skillshare provides learners with the platform to learn by creating projects, sharing and collaborating with over eight million learners. The classes are offered by global experts.

Sonam Dorji, an amateur photographer, said that he learned new photography ideas and skills from Skillshare. “Skillshare has classes on portrait, outdoor and street photography which helps me gain more skills.”

The participants got access to premium content in the platform, he said. 

Another participant said that the platform helped improve her writing skills. 

“I took courses on creative writing and storytelling,” she said. “The Writer’s Toolkit: 6 Steps to a Successful Writing Habit was an interesting course for me.”

One can download the classes and watch them at their convenience, she said. 

The labour ministry’s chief programme officer, Tenzin Choden, said that as of April, the participants attended 2,862 classes of which 174 classes had completed. 

Communication Skills, Microsoft Excel Essentials, Autodesk Revit, Graphic Design, Art of Storytelling in Communication and Presentation, Leadership and Management Essentials, Bentley STAAD Pro, Ruby on Rails in 30 Days, Coding for Beginners and Cryptocurrency were the courses the participants completed in the past four months. 

Tenzin Choden said that the Skillshare initiative provided skills through an online platform to jobseekers, entrepreneurs and individuals working in the private sector. “MoLHR seeks to contribute to national human resource development through the support of such initiatives.”

Edited by Jigme Wangchuk