eBlog by Tore Hoel

A few days ago I blogged on the Symposium on Competencies the ICOPER project and the proposal for a Reference model that was presented by Luk Vervenne and Jehad Najjar of the Belgium company Synergetics. I did not expect the strong reactions and hint that this discussion was raised in a wrong context, i.e. in my private blog. Well, standards people are used to wear different hats - and as a Norwegian citizen I think I will be the judge of where I choose to comment on publicly available documents. So please read the comments to my posting at the ICOPER site, and then I have so more news for you.

The WG3 in the ISO sub committee 36 has just released a draft for a Conceptual Reference Model for Competencies and Related Objects, which is available at the ISO site as PDF. The model is outlined in the figure below:

Comparing the documents, the draft technical report from ISO and the draft reference model from ICOPER, a number of questions arise:

• The information model in the ISO document is quite understandable. The ICOPER document does not outline any model that allows us to see the relations between the main concepts, at least not in a summarising diagram.

• There is no distinction between competency and competence in the ISO document. The ISO document summarises “competency representations can be found in “Competency Information Islands” under the following labels: 1) “Competency” or “Competence” , 2) “Training goals”, “Learning Objectives”, “Educational Objectives”, “Abilities”, Capabilities”; 3) “Aptitude” “. When I suggest that the distinction between competency and competences is a little difficult to grasp, especially by an international audience, I get a pointed finger saying that this difference was explained to me, and that I should go to a web page “that explains perfectly the two terms”. Well, I have read the web page, and I found a tour de force through history of thought since Plato. So I still ask the question: Are the concepts in the ICOPER draft well considered, given the international context of the proposed work?
• The ISO document will be turned into a technical report, that might or might not be a foundation to build applications. As a conceptual reference model it might be looked upon as first stab at the challenge to steer the discussion that might lead to more implementable standards. However, it is interesting to see how the question of who should be leading who is played out in the two documents. Well, indirectly anyway in the case of the ISO draft: ISO is the top of the standards pyramid, and if they try to create global consensus on the top level concepts, that’s what they try to do… The draft from the European ICOPER project shows a figure that could be interpreted in many ways:

In my first blog posting I read this as message to standards fora like CEN and ISO to lay off, waiting for the joint HR-XML IMS initiative to come up with a proposal. In the reply the HR-XML chair says this i incorrect. On the contrary, input from CEN and ISO is most welcome, “because the last thing we need is 5 different standards (IMS, HR-XML, IEEE, ISO, CEN, …) or separate standards for HigherEd, work, K12, etc…” It seems that I have got the figure on the standards evolution wrong then. Nevertheless, my question of who will be leading who is till open. Is the ISO proposal for a conceptual model a good starting point for the work on competency data management? If not, how should we try to influence the report? If it is good work, how will that influence the ICOPER work, that to my surprise “will develop the IEEE Competency Profle (CP), in a way that enables the representation of competencies (and relations between them) from both academic and workplace competencies” (page 6)?

(Do I need to state that the opinions in this blog post are mine alone, and that no organisation, neither Norwegian nor European, is to blame for my points of view. And that they have nothing to do with my role as project partner in any project. No, but said anyway.)

Technorati Tags: competencies, icoper, IEC JTC1 SC36