Collaborative Learning Model for Identifying Competence Gap of Self-Employed Worker in Local Community

The COVID-19 outbreak, along with Thailand's current economic situation, has resulted in population displacement, with young employees returning to their hometowns and starting their own businesses constituting the largest group of migrants. This project proposed a collaborative learning model for students and young self-employed people to work together to identify the skills required to be self-employed in the local community, with the assumption that after graduation, students will return to their hometowns and one of their professional options will be to start their own business or work as self-employed workers. The proposed learning model was evaluated with multidisciplinary students from the University of Phayao and young self-employed employees in Wieng Lo village, Chun district, Phayao province, Thailand. The model's main concept is to allow students and self-employed people to share their knowledge and experience, and then to collaborate on identifying key competences for self-employed workers in their community. The real-world experience of the workers and the professional knowledge of the students can help each other fill up the gaps. The results of identifying competency gaps can be utilized to create an upskilling or reskilling course that will fulfill the needs of future workers. Workers can use this information to plan their own self-directed learning. Students can also learn from professionals' experiences about the vital competencies they possess so that they can grow themselves before graduating.