Towards competence-related interoperability

1
Towards competence-related interoperability

• TEN Competence Workshop
• Manchester, 2007-01-11
• Simon Grant
• Independent Consultant
• JISC CETIS Portfolio SIG Joint Coordinator

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.learni
  ngnetworks.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