The Academy of the Commons, the formal name, also doing business as Commons Academy, its DBA name, is an outreach and extension of the Skillsladder Academy. One of the goals of the Skillsladder founder, Edmund DelSol, is to make quality learning available to everyone.

Being “poorly educated” is bad, in fact, terrible, in an age where technology can think and decide at the level of smart (aka ‘educated’) humans!

In prior corporate roles, Edmund operated as a competent builder of learning systems and a successful product leader for a significant technical education portfolio. One of his most striking observations from those experiences was about differences in motivation. The comparison is based on his following 15 years as a professor of business and management studies at a community college business school. A third aspect of the comparison is support provided to youth and adults in informal learning environments.

His corporate ‘clients’, the right term for that group of learners, were advanced technical specialists who understood the urgent need to stay abreast of technological change. Their employers, who paid richly for both their salaries and their expensive training, also needed those cutting-edge skills for their businesses to remain competitive. As such, achieving success as a manager of advanced technology training boiled down to fulfilling clear skills upgrading requirements of a demanding clientele. Their learning needs were clear, so how to succeed with them was clear.

It is a rather different story with many college students, ideators, and budding entrepreneurs. The ‘motivation’ to learn runs into the very real challenge of linking learning to outcomes. ‘Seeing’ the usefulness of your learning can be a challenge, Where there is no obvious gain, motivation fades. Sometimes, the question of usefulness itself becomes a barrier to learning at all. Yes, that hesitancy is justified. But a clear focus is not only for advanced learners. Anyone can have that clarity. The important requirement is to have a clear outcome in mind. The learning should then be driven by that outcome. And second, the learning should be applied, as you acquire it.

But what if you do not have that clear outcome in mind? What if that sense of direction itself is the problem you have been struggling with? Many early learners, staring at the vastness of the future, are themselves not clear on what they want, and therefore, what they need to learn. Even more, how to apply what they learn to achieve their desired end state, against their ever shifting perception of what success looks like.

One of the most important resources that you have and need to apply carefully is time: time to discover, time to try out, and time to learn. Learning, takes time, no matter how good we are at it, or how well the learning content is structured. The more experienced among us can guide new and advancing learners on how to better optimize their time spent on learning. Tip #1: do not attempt to learn everything. Tip #2: do not let learning stop you from taking immediate action in your areas of interest.

Another important requirement is what I describe as learning safety: the freedom to explore without feeling or looking foolish, or having any judgment imposed on you. And a third big requirement is learning support: the right help to meet you where you are and help you to get to where you wish to go. From experience, those of us who are farther down the road can say, ‘Yes, learning will help.’ None other than Warren Buffett, himself, promotes the idea that investing in yourself and thus, caring about your learning, is one of the best investments you can make.

The uncertainty about when will enough be enough is relatively easy to address. The end state is like the horizon. Once you reach the state you targeted, there will be another one on the horizon. That’s a good thing, and not a reason for concern. That real and enduring promise of more–and ‘more’ can be described in many ways–keeps life fresh and interesting. So, keep learning and growing!

To improve your chances of success, the Commons Academy gives you a means to address the challenge of learning uncertainty: the ‘what to learn’ part. Here, you will find a rich set of fundamental learning available, free! Anyone who wants to get ahead can explore and benefit from various learning paths. These are simply categories of topics that focus on a particular issue, and take you from simple to more complex levels of learning and skills growth.

Using this free resource is a reliable and easily accessible way to get a good sense of what a particular field involves. That will also give you, a good sense of how well it fits your own sense of purpose. That’s what we wish to nurture: an embrace of each person’s individuality, and empowerment over their lives. Because of the attention to selection and preparation, the material you learn will be good for you in many roles that you may choose.

Success in life is also about making connections between what is going on in the broader world and what you are doing. That success, whether in your personal activities or business pursuits, never follows a straight line. So, as you progress along any path that may interest you, know that you are putting a solid foundation under you to better see and act on those connections. That way, you will accelerate success in your chosen field.

Going Beyond Learning: Become An Advocate or A Leader

Beyond the rich set of free learning, the Commons Academy offers a highly affordable lifetime membership. That allows you to be a permanent and influential participant in a progressive learning space that supports and encourages opportunity for everyone. That option adds another set of very useful developmental capabilities. As our users become better skilled in the valuable fields, they must evolve as professionals too. The low and one-time membership fee buys the assurance of a support structure to help them to grow.

Many will see the value of this membership, and we encourage them to share it with their communities. An attractive reseller option lets members translate their learning satisfaction with the Commons Academy into a role as advocates of growth. For that, they will be attractively rewarded, enough so to make them net earners to easily recover any membership fees they pay.

We also recognize that some of our users have talents to share. As such, we offer a leadership option, to create a specialized circle of learners within the Commons Academy. Those will be able to use all the rich content within the space, to establish and run a customized growth space, or learning collectives, for their topic(s) of interest. That level will offer a robust train-the-trainer (TTT) support to ensure our more enterprising Commons Community Collective Leaders succeed.

Fulfilling our Mission in Various Ways

To know and not do Is not to know. Education without action is entertainment.

This general assessment dates as far back as Herbert Spencer, an English philosopher and psychologist born in 1820. You will see a myriad of variations everywhere. That’s because the statement reflects a powerful truth.

Each iteration of your education is a destination of sorts: to being you to a more empowered place. In line with that belief, the Commons Academy embraces the Skillsladder Learning mission: Knowledge Design for a Modern Workforce. We want to give our users the right support to be highly effective in an ever-changing world, in the field(s) of their choice. The support we provide enables our users to:

• acquire important basic skills for free, and go on their way successfully, if that is all they require;
• buy a membership that will support rich continuous learning, for those who see the value in getting better, continually;
• share their success with others, and be rewarded for that advocacy, by bringing new members into a powerfully useful community;
• apply their creative and entrepreneurial talents to form learning collectives, specialized spaces where our leadership-minded members add unique value, built on Commons Academy resources.