InLOC:the potential of competence structures

Simon Grant2013-05-08for IEC-CETIS

InLOC context

clear requirement to represent skills/competences etc.XCRI; OER; recruitment (in future?); IAG; VLE/LMS

much material out thereincluding NOS, ASN, e-CF, VitaeRDF,

failure so far to cover structuresindividual stuff kind of OK IMS RDCEO, IEEE RCD

IEEE SRCM (Competency Maps) stalled 2006

InteropAbility (JISC project) led the way in showing that something like this was practical and feasible

LOC = learning outcome or competence

potential significance

adds value to frameworks

provides a sound basis for genuinely useful technologiesputting together: skills frameworks and standards; e-portfolio tools; learning, education and training tools and systems; HR, recruitment and employment services; learning resources, towards new tools and services

communicating LOC structures if public, expose to open search and query, with the components able to be reused and remixed

prompting people to assign identifiers (URLs, IRIs) to their LOC concept definitions to enable linked data for the Semantic Web

easier to reuse than reinvent

what if InLOC made it easier to reuse than reinvent?assigning URIs

publishing structures

linking data together

common terminology

what if InLOC's easy comparison, and growing reuse, led to people actually starting to come together in the terminology they use for the fit of human and opportunity?education and training approach employers

employers approach education and training

services including IAG adopting the common language

ubiquity

what if the common terminology (together with associated URIs) became ubiquitous, acrosslearning opportunity pre-requisites and outcomes

basis for assessment criteria

job descriptions

portfolio and CV claims of ability and competence

resources for learning education and training

qualifications

apprenticeships

badges

InLOC outputs

CEN Workshop Agreement on:an Information Model that offers a coherent solution to how to represent this kind of structure

Guidelines that explain both the model itself, and its application to wider European Learner Mobility

some Application Profile work, relevant to Europass CV

and a report, not yet for CWA, on bindings of that modelan XML binding, which people seem most interested in to start with

an RDF binding, which hold much promise for the future

a JSON binding, for easy communication between web tools

extra work

creating two prototype demonstration applications to work with InLOC structures

no problems translating the model into a relational database and using it to drive web applications, that in turn will help towards the adoption of the model

creating transforms to convert between bindings

integrated our requirements with the CEN WS-LT's ELMO project, which takes forward EN15981 and EN15982 towards practical implementation.

a little philosophical reflection

different people simplify things in their own way

a realistic common model may look complex or abstract

InLOC makes the model simple, accepting some abstractionto help developers and implementers get into it most easily they can manage fine with abstraction

they then produce the user tools that will make things easy to understand for the domain practitioners (who want their own languages)

you are unlikely to see anything else this simple that covers the ground most models have to be broken into several pages

the information model

the
model as if it were
UML

the RDF version of the model (similar simplicity: linked data, Semantic Web)

key features of the model

clarifying distinction between structure and concept

distinction between defining and attributing levels

requiring a greater-is-better number for levels, which makes levels simple and highly flexible

putting together several relationships and compound properties in one information model structure

extra simplicity at the cost of accepting abstraction so that implementation is easier

model intended for developers, not domain expertsyou can't please all of them anyway

the LOC structure

LOCstructure is a little like a document

has an unexciting set of single-valued metadatabut including the non-standard combinationRules

may have sub-structures (though not simple/common)

stands as the container of the LOC definitionshas LOC definitions as its parts

expressly separate from any LOC definitionfor clean logic and implementation

the LOC definition

LOCdefinition rather like RDCEO / RCD definition

can be at any granularitypart definitions have one step finer granularity

expressly excludes any structural informationthey are sometimes mixed together (e.g. NOS)

but separating them is cleaner

includes as metadata only single-valued items

also primaryStructure for disambiguation and context often needed in practical examples

the LOC association

LOCassociation offers a single mechanism representing various things:structural relationships between structures and definitions

associative relationships between them

compound properties of structures and definitionsin 5 types: by, category, credit, level, topic

in XML they are contained in the LOC structure tree

in RDF they share the same graph

InLOC levels

defining levels and giving them ascending numbers for automatic comparison logically comes first

a level definition is a particular kind of LOCdefinitionit has to be binary, not rankable

no need for maximum, minimum score etc. but can easily accommodate that if desired

can have generic levels in a structure and specific levels of a particular competence (see e.g. e-CF)

external framework levels can be attributed to things

bindings

XML

The XML binding follows the UML diagram closely

the information model was based on the idea of this binding

RDF

RDF doesn't work quite the same as XML

XML isn't a natural binding for linked data

so the information model is adjusted slightlythe adjusted model covers the same ground

generally inter-convertible

slightly more restricted that the original

JSON

JSON is hierarchical like XML

but not as good for human reading

mainly for communication between clients and servers in web services

maps closely to the XML binding

issues

getting people to contribute

why should they?

because there is something in it for them but what?

usually, they already have their own private business models quite clear what is their market orientation?

needs new entrepreneurs but how do we reach them by luck?

policy drivers might help motivate business engagement, but are market motivations are more reliable?

need for publicity

we really needed a big PR campaign, or to ride on the back of someone else's

but no one on the team was able to contribute much expert time on publicity

creating a great specification is not all that is needed for a successful standard

recommendations

encourage publication of
InLOC-format frameworks

get hold of any owners of public frameworks that would benefit from wider dissemination

from e-CF, to Cedefop, CEN, DGs, European and national government agencies,

explain URIs, interoperability, reuse, linked data

explore what value might be added by InLOC for each stakeholdermake sure they are aware of that

motivate them towards adopting InLOC

can anyone help?

embed in other projects

one way of getting adoption is to go through European funded projects

ideally first through creating frameworks

then through adding InLOC functionality to tools

do you know of any project that could use InLOC?

make sure we maintain expertise
for guiding future implementation

we don't know when different stakeholders will be ready to adopt InLOC

it may depends on either policy development, or commercial motivation, or both

when they are ready, the easier it is for them to adopt InLOC, the more likely they are to do it

maintain Web resources, clear signposts

make it easy to find sources of expertise

tools should make it easy for users
to link to InLOC frameworks

providing frameworks in InLOC is a first step

the next step is more of a challenge

people employers, learners, etc. will only use them if they make sense and are easy enough to use

so: find out what makes it easy for users

ensure that system owners and developers make it easy

explore schema.org and RDFa

schema.org could be very influential, alongside HTML5, for the future of the Web

RDFa allows the same web page to be human and machine readable at the same time

ideal format for easy publication of frameworks

needs a little development build on top of the InLOC RDF binding

may well be worth doing

are you interested?

extend InLOC as required

define useful APIs

provide facilities for representing some of the structure-specific terminology(see examples from e-CF and VitaeRDF)

but most of all, get people to use it, so it moves on from anticipatory to real, live, implemented

build on existing prototype demos

InLOC for standardization ENs?

when is best timing for standardization?probably after more time for implementation experience

when more stakeholders have offered support

ask how open the standard could be, and whether that will work for the community

bear in mind international agenda in ISO

decide what and why to standardize

take that to CEN TC353

more open standards generally?

the Learning Technology / ITLET community needs:open standards that are free to implement

open documentation easily available on the web

possibly also the freedom to mix in with other specs(that is a problem particular to ICT)

they may ignore standards that do not offer this

W3C, IETF are the current norm for good practice

can CEN rise to the challenge? How?

can the Workshop Learning Technologies help?

conclusion

InLOC could play the role ofa vital piece of the jigsaw, even if not the final one

an essential enabler of a new competence ecosystem

a standard to motivate growing consensus

It will take time but it could be highly effective

thanks foryour interestand attentionasimong@gmail.com@asimong

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