eBlog by Tore Hoel

Methodology for analysing and validating standards was a major issue during the Vienna General Assembly last week. The issue is on the agenda for a Flashmeeting in two weeks, where partners will elaborate on how we go from a conceptual domain model to Data Models, Service Models and Process Models.

For some time I have been a little concerned that we are making life too simple for ourselves when mapping the different layers of the ICOPER reference model to the relevant standards. We should also observe that there are different “families” of standards, and allow for a discussion on what family is the best match for the competency domain.

In Simon Grants excellent blog posting on our last deliverable with the long title “Model for describing learning needs and learning opportunities taking context ontology modelling into account” there are some seeds for the discussion I call for.

Then it [the deliverable] goes on to suggests an information model for “Learning Outcome Definitions”. This is a tricky one, as one cannot really avoid IMS RDCEO and IEEE RCD. As I’ve argued in the past, I don’t think these are really substantially more helpful than just using Dublin Core, and in a way the ICOPER work here implicitly recognises this, in that even though they still doff a cap to those two specs, most of RDCEO is “profiled” away, and instead a “knowledge / skill / competence” category is added, to square with the concepts as described in the EQF.

When Simon is referring to Dublin Core, it is the DC Abstract model he thinks of, the model based on RDF and semantic web. I wonder if the specifications we turn out as a result of the ICOPER project is “web architecture enabled” – or if our focus is still the repository view of walled “content spaces”, be it OICS or others.