Towards competence-related interoperability

1. TEN Competence Workshop Manchester, 2007-01-11 Simon Grant Independent Consultant JISC CETIS Portfolio SIG Joint Coordinator Towards competence-related interoperability

2. 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

3. 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 :-)

4. 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?

5. 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

6. 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

7. Implementation • Desire to remain binding-neutral • Details to be worked out through projects

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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