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E-portfolios: with competence?

a way forward for employment with the InLOC specification

Simon Grant, CETISat the Mahara UK Conference, Birmingham

2013-06-04

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Outline

what e-portfolio tools have done well the challenge of employment and skills example: Totara importing Ofqual frameworks how it could all be a lot easier with InLOC what needs to be done to make it happen more

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What e-portfolios are good at

portfolio of artistic or other works with commentary or reflection learning logs, with reflection self-presentation to appropriate audiences including skills and competences

which may be evidenced by the attached artefacts that have needed the skill or competence

which may be explicitly claimed, and then evidenced by video, testimonial, etc.

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Portfolios and employment

not widely used yet why not?

employers can't afford to look through hundreds of e-portfolios – “not more information!”

they can't easily use portfolio information to filter through the kind of candidates that they want

a short list of candidates' e-portfolios might be looked through to give a sense of what kind of people they are

but short lists are not now found through e-portfolios

does that make sense so far?

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Ideal solution...

employers need short lists of people who are suitable for the positions they have to fill

to get short list, employers could specify and search for the areas of skill and competence they want

in someone within the organisation, or someone new the required (proficiency) levels of those areas specifying the evidence they might accept for (pre-)selection

from the short list look at the e-portfolios for detail example or experience: anyone suggest?

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Employers search terms?

competency names? but how would you know whether, say, one definition of “team

working” competence would be the same as another? or whether the same thing might have another name? and what happens when you go international?

qualifications... academic? vocational? what do they really mean, anyway? hasn't one of the problems always been that having a

qualification is not the same as being able to do the job?

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Vocational qualifications

the most directly relevant to employment apprenticeship (one type) has long history Trades Schools started in UK in 1907 NVQs (“National”, another type) since 1986 NVQs based on National Occupational Standards

strong industry involvement, so language is OK however, NOSs are declining in importance

it's all “employers” at present

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Apprenticeships

are based in the work place focused on employers and their requirements may combine technical and employability skills “Apprenticeships must include the following elements:

… module on personal learning and thinking skills … ” https://www.gov.uk/apprenticeships-guide http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk/

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Higher apprenticeships

“aims of the Higher Apprenticeship Fund are to: generate employer contributions to support programme costs facilitate stronger sector or occupational partnerships to drive

developments create a lasting change in employer recruitment and training

patterns develop new models of Apprenticeship learning at the higher

level”

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Totara for apprenticeships

Totara is a distribution of Moodle for the corporate sector designed to work with job competencies Totara for apprenticeships:

is based around competency etc has strong e-portfolio connections, with Mahara “harvests” frameworks from Ofqual could be generalised from apprenticeships outwards

see … http://www.totaralms.com/case-studies/wyre-academy http://learnit-e.com/bespoke-apprenticeships/

Ofqual “harvester”

Ofqual's “Register of Regulated Qualifications” see e.g. http://register.ofqual.gov.uk/Unit

over 17,000 qualifications and 41,000 units search for the qualification or unit you want displays learning outcomes and assessment criteria Totara for Apprenticeships has implemented a way of

reading these into their system – “harvesting” would take at least several days programming for each

other new source of information (“harvesting” takes more work than just “importing”)

But no standardization

they can harvest Ofqual ones, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to import any vocational (or other) qualification, framework, or standard? e.g. National Occupational Standards

information is not available in standardized format what could that standard be? it's called InLOC, and it's new “Integrating Learning Outcomes and Competences”

What is InLOC?

a European expert project that finished earlier this year drawing on earlier work including “InteropAbility”

InLOC specifies a particular way of expressing any structure (often “framework”) of skills, competence, etc. an “information model” with standard formats that can be processed freely and easily by software

together with URIs for each part of the structure structures initially represented in XML also potentially in JSON and RDF specifications and other information available at

http://wiki.teria.no/display/inloc/Home

InLOC features

distinguishes structures and definitions structures: like frameworks, relating a set of … definitions: separate skills, knowledge items, competences definitions can occur in different structures structures can take any form, and be of any depth

clear and principled treatment of levels both defining levels and attributing levels

can easily represent multilingual information scope for all the most relevant educational metadata single structure for all relationships and compound

attributes with easy mapping to RDF (linked data)

e.g. the European e-Competence Framework (e-CF)

look at the PDF the structure is the framework as a whole the definitions are every piece of text setting out

something that people could know or do available from http://www.ecompetences.eu/ for an explanation of how to represent it in InLOC

http://purl.org/net/inloc/InLOC+explained+through+example the InLOC XML for the e-CF is available

from http://wiki.teria.no/display/inloc/XML http://wiki.teria.no/download/attachments/24315835/e-CF_V2.xml

If e.g. Ofqual used InLOC...

they could publish everything in InLOC format any system could import the information reliably

the system would just have to extend their software once not dependent on detailed (and potentially inconsistent) layout

other framework owners could export similar professional competency frameworks National Occupational Standards etc...

National Occupational Standards

http://nos.ukces.org.uk/Pages/index.aspx http://nos.ukces.org.uk/help/Pages/FAQs.aspx created by Sector Skills Councils and others groups together sets of

performance criteria knowledge and understanding

they already have a clear template would not be difficult in principle to publish InLOC

Mahara and InLOC

Mahara implements Leap2A import/export, which already has the capability to refer to URIs of “abilities”

InLOC gives framework owners the incentive to make URIs for each of their ability / competence definitions

Viewers of an e-portfolio should be able to click on an ability claim and link to an original definition

Mahara could hold information ready for a matching system

Totara complements this and makes a more complete system for occupational skills and competence

The argument summarised

if frameworks were widely available then definitions could be reused rather than reinvented communities could come together on terms to use e-portfolios would be able to

refer clearly to definitions in the employer's terms represent people's claims in those terms show relevant and acceptable evidence

then if e-portfolios coordinate with recruitment matching employers get short lists, and then are linked straight

through to the evidence in learner's own terms

What needs to be done

FIRST persuade Ofqual, UKCES and others to publish the

information related to skills and competence as InLOC carry on building tools like Totara for Apprenticeships,

making each tool able to process InLOC informationTHEN get employers to use the same frameworks when

recruiting create the matching services to create short lists

Thanks!

thanks for your attention I'm happy to advise or consider being involved in any

projects that could use InLOC, and can also recommend other colleagues

questions?

asimong@gmail.com@asimong