e-portfolios: with competence?
DESCRIPTION
Simon Grant's presentation at the Mahara UK conference 2013-06-04, BirminghamTRANSCRIPT
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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?
[email protected]@asimong