Open Learning Architecture: A Policy Guide To Unlocking Human Capital

This doctoral dissertation advances a comprehensive policy and systems design framework for reimagining how regions develop, recognize, and mobilize human capital in an era of labour-market volatility, technological disruption, and extended working lives. Drawing on Design Science Research (DSR), the study conceptualizes, designs, and tests the Lifelong Open Learning Architecture (LOLA): a federated, competency-based human capital infrastructure intended to replace institution-centric, credential-bound learning systems developed for the industrial era. The research integrates an extensive review of global literature on adult learning, credentialing, labour-market transformation, and natural monopoly dynamics with 34 semi-structured interviews across employers, policymakers, learning providers, and credentialing bodies. Findings reveal that legacy learning architectures are structurally constrained by credentialism, regulatory rigidity, fragmented pathways, and monopoly control over recognition, limiting adaptability, equity, and mobility. LOLA responds by unbundling learning from assessment, shifting recognition from credentials to verified competencies, and reorganizing governance through independent Competency Colleges supported by interoperable digital and policy infrastructure. Using Alberta, Canada as a design context, the dissertation presents a ten-year transition roadmap, multiple adoption pathways, and design fictions that illustrate lived system impacts. The study contributes an evidence-based, scalable model for transforming regional human capital systems, offering policymakers and system designers practical tools to unlock human potential, strengthen labour-market alignment, and support lifelong learning across a fifty-year working life.