Towards competence-related interoperability

TEN Competence WorkshopManchester, 2007-01-11

Simon GrantIndependent Consultant

JISC CETIS Portfolio SIG Joint Coordinator

Assumptions

Interoperability of competence and related definitions would be useful

There is no good solution at present Few definitions are even available at URIs

Related only internally

No time to justify those points in detail

My TEN Competence Sofia paper is also relevant

Interoperability logical options

Do nothing and let chaos grow

Central registries for competence definitions I have previously suggested this kind of approach

I no longer think it is practically plausible

Many people seem to agree

Distributed, interconnected system FOAF and XFN give a general idea

Don't forget about XCRI :-)

Substance to interconnection

Equivalence between definitions

Non-equivalence

Satisfaction “that one there at least covers this one here”

Contribution “that one is part of or helps towards this one”

maybe “this one aims to help towards that one”

Are references local, remote or both?

Side comment about levels

An issue which needs to be resolved

Levels should be specific to a competence Not generic or part of a framework

in general there are no universal levels

Having levels in a framework invites problems people's competence is mixed in any level system

people argue about level definitions and allocations

see also my TEN Competence Sofia paper

Distributed interoperability

Each local site has: Competence defs based on RCD / HR-XML / ... &

either additional details (how to integrate with specs?) or just add a single link to ontology / relationships file

Possible ontology / relationships file or service RDF/OWL or XTM or either need to agree which of the relationships to have relationships can be to local or remote definitions

Implementation

Desire to remain binding-neutral

Details to be worked out through projects

Tools and services: e.g.

Competence equivalence manager could notify of any equivalences added to

definitions you have noted as equivalent to yours useful to maintain quality and reputation prompts non-equivalence declarations as needed

could draw graph of equivalent competences

Competence definition search and browse could use a bit like a thesaurus

could also use KM tools

Possible integration /mashup

With XCRI-like services: find courses through which I gain this competence

what courses can I take with these competences?

With employment / recruitment: similarly

Combined: what courses for what jobs etc.

There's nothing in principle preventing these at present: the point is that without interoperability, lists are very short and practically useless

Thanks and References

Thanks for your interest! Both of these references represent a position where I imagined central registries to be possible.

But apart from that, they give a lot of useful detail about other aspects of the issues.

Grant, S. (2006) Frameworks of competence: common or specific? Proceedings of International Workshop in Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development, TENCompetence Conference. September 12th, Sofia, Bulgaria: TENCompetence. Retrieved November 2006, from http://dspace.learningnetworks.org/handle/1820/746

Grant, S. (2005). SPWS: Introducing the Skills Meta-Framework. SPWS project deliverable. http://www.elframework.org/projects/spws/SPWS-meta-framework-final.pdf/view is as delivered; http://www.inst.co.uk/clients/jisc/SPWSintro.doc is a maintained version.

For contact details see my home page through Google