CWS 3.0: September 18, 2013

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Elance Launches Online Courses and Skill Assessments

Elance announced yesterday two new partnerships that make available online training and skill assessments to freelancers, giving contingent workforce managers another source for skilled workers.

Through a partnership with SkilledUp, freelancers now have access to curriculum covering more than 500 different skill areas. Many of the 6,000 courses that are available are openly licensed college-level courses by distinguished professors.

Additionally, a partnership with Smarterer gives freelancers access to hundreds of assessments to enable them to quantify their skills.

“The alignment of education and employment is a revolution that can change our global economy,” said Dave Balter, executive chair of Smarterer.

Some traditional staffing firms do offer similar services, such as ManpowerGroup, which offers online courses to workers who sign up with the firm.

But this development illustrates how online service platforms can be used to create value “in innovative ways by developing ‘service ecosystems’ that digitally link together and merge partner services into new value-creating configurations (in this case, work arrangements, skills testing, and learning capabilities),” says Affiliate Analyst Andrew Karpie