Skills do not travel well. Finish a course on one platform and it means little on the next. Earn a credential at one school and an employer who uses different words cannot read it. Learners repeat what they already know because nobody can see what they can do.
Open Degree is our answer. It is a shared, open standard that makes skills, outcomes, and credentials portable across schools, platforms, and careers. It unbundles courses into clear outcomes with coherence maps (what to learn before and after), ties them to evidence-based assessments, and issues verifiable micro-credentials you truly own. Built as a nonprofit commons with free AI tooling, Open Degree helps learners, educators, and employers speak the same language, so progress is recognized anywhere.
Two things at once
Open Degree is a standard: a small, open format for describing what someone can do, what they should learn first, how it is assessed, and how it is credentialed.
It is also a curriculum: a single, free, open-source learning plan built on that format and created through crowdsourcing. Anyone can propose an outcome, write a course, design an assessment, or review someone else’s work, the way open-source software is built.
How it fits with DIY Degree
Open Degree is part of the eCollective family, alongside DIY Degree. They are different kinds of thing on purpose.
DIY Degree is a gamified learning engine. It accepts many teachers and course sources, helps you quickly find the best options and piece together a degree, and keeps you motivated while you demonstrate what you have learned.
Open Degree is one of the sources you can select there: the free, open one. It is offered to DIY Degree on the same open terms it offers every other platform.
What is here today
Version 0.1 is a skeleton meant to show the format end to end:
- Two seed domains, Geometry and Data Literacy.
- Seven outcomes with prerequisites, rendered as a coherence map.
- Two free courses, two open assessments, and two micro-credentials.
- The standard itself, written down so that it can be argued with.
Everything is a draft. That is the point of publishing it now.
What you can do
Read the principles. Pick a “start here” outcome on the map. Then get involved: the outcomes you wish existed are the roadmap.