Towards competence-related interoperability TEN Competence Workshop Manchester, Simon Grant Independent 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 Grant, S. (2005). SPWS: Introducing the Skills Meta-Framework. SPWS project deliverable. is as delivered; is a maintained version. For contact details see my home page through Google