The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) revamped the Seoul Lifelong Learning portal and updated it as the Seoul Learn 4050 platform on Fri, Mar. 31 to provide intensive support for middle-aged citizens’ participation in the workforce.

The new platform features an overview of the city’s Seoul Learn 4050 project as well as a new career transition consulting webpage. As a public online platform, users can sign up to take both online and offline job training programs modeled after the pedagogy of Minerva University. Users in their 40s and 50s can even receive personalized counseling through learning history management.

Seoul Learn 4050 offers about 390 free online content across 5 fields (i.e. leadership, capacity-building, digital, entrepreneurship, and certification) as well as offline courses from 63 field training institutions affiliated with Seoul for in-depth learning.

In April, the city plans to link more than 300 online courses with Korean massive open online courses (K-MOOC) offered by the National Institute for Lifelong Education (NILE), including employment capacity-building, Industry 4.0, and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide greater support for job competency content.

In July, the city plans to additionally provide specialized online content preferred by office workers in their 40s, including career/job change, entrepreneurship, and small business management as well as field trips through university-linked vocational competency strengthening programs utilizing the excellent infrastructure of universities.

Moreover, the city is operating mentoring groups comprising professional consultants to act as “coordinators” to connect online learners with on-site programs to closely support learners’ education. Through this, learners can receive online/offline job-related educational information through consultation with their mentors, enabling to set up a learning plan for their career/job change or receive detailed job-related consulting services.

More information about Seoul Learn 4050 and available programs can be found on the official website (sll.seoul.go.kr).