Abstract
Competency is a central concept for human resource management, training and education. We define a competency as the capacity of a person to display a generic skill with a certain level of performance when applied to one or more knowledge entities. Competencies, and competency referentials grouping competencies, are essential elements for user models, e-Portfolios, adaptive learning, and personalization in Technology-based learning. But to be processed both by humans and by software tools, competencies should be represented in a formal, non-ambiguous model called an ontology. Moreover, this model should use a shared vocabulary to describe the generic skills and the knowledge entities. Defining and linking shared vocabularies is the purpose of ontologies in the semantic web. The goal of our research is to develop a competency ontology for the semantic web to be used as a shared referential in the description of competencies and competency profiles. We analysed five previous competency models and developed COMP2, a new competency ontology that integrates important elements of previous models and the richness of the semantic web vocabulary. COMP2 provides processing capabilities both to humans and computers. Its graphic model is highly readable by humans for design, evaluation and communication purposes. It also translates, together with its data sets, to standard semantic Web code for machine processing. The ontology is composed of five stages that are interlinked with other ontologies in use within the web of linked open data. We will present an example for the use of the ontology for competency-based personalization in learning environments.
Highlights
Acquiring new competencies is a central goal of any education or knowledge management process
A first formal competency ontology Based on our own extensive research on the conceptual and practical dimensions of competency modelling (Author, ref 1), we developed a first competency model that has been used for more than 15 years, to define competency referentials for course design or for professional organizations and in software, energy and banking companies, either using the Méthode d’ingénierie de systèmes d’apprentissage (MISA) Instructional Design Method (Author, ref 2) or the Technology-enhanced Learning Operating System (TELOS) (Authors, ref 10) system for knowledge management to which the competency model has been integrated as a component
Related efforts to build generic competency models Even though there are many competency or profiles for particular subjects in the literature, we found only a few generic competency proposals abstracted from particular domains that could be transformed in Semantic Web (SW) ontology format, which is our goal in this research
Summary
Acquiring new competencies is a central goal of any education or knowledge management process. Ministries of education, school boards and teacher training institutes use competency profiles to define the goals of school programs or courses. Consulting companies present their expertise by enumerating their competencies, marketing their services in this way. Organisations and companies use guidelines or computerized tools to manage the competencies of their staffs, considered as their main asset. (2021) 8:16 agencies or professional associations use them to define and prepare professional training programs to maintain professional expertise Environ. (2021) 8:16 agencies or professional associations use them to define and prepare professional training programs to maintain professional expertise
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