Toward an Integrated Competence-based System

Supporting Lifelong Learning and Employability:

Concepts, Model, and Challenges

Yongwu Miao, Marcel van der Klink, Jo Boon, Peter Sloep, and Rob Koper,

Open University of the Netherlands

ICWL 2009, August 19-21, Aachen, Germany

Overview

• Introduction

• System Design

• Challenges

• Conclusions

Introduction

• Knowledge economy is characterized by a dynamic market, severe changing occupations, and insecurity of jobs [Schmid 1998].

• Changing markets and advanced technologies are forcing companies to continually adjust their business processes. Thus, companies need to recruit and/or train employees who can quickly fit the new work environment.

• Occupations change and insecurity of jobs require continuous, lifelong competence development of the individuals.

Introduction

Lifelong learning, according to van Merriënboer et. al. (2009), is best facilitated in the contexts,

• which are situated in professional or daily life, • with a strong focus on higher-order skills (e.g., setting own

goals, evaluating and planning own learning) and professional skills, and

• with the learners, who have different motivations, as a group, are much more heterogeneous.

Introduction

Develop methodologies and a software platform that

• enables organizations (especially SMEs) to construct and customize simulated work environments with business processes and authentic tasks for training, and

• supports networked lifelong learners with diverse motivations and backgrounds to develop competences in virtual, simulated work environments through collaborative performing the authentic tasks,

in order to enhance the employability of both organizations and

lifelong learners.

System Design

Learning Networks

• A learning network is an ensemble of persons, institutions, and learning activities that are interconnected through and supported by information and communication technologies in such a way that the network self-organizes.

• A participant (a lifelong learner or an institution) of a learning network can provide learning activities (e.g., courses, training programs, assessment, and learning materials) and can engage in a series of learning activities (may be offered by others) to reach a goal, such as acquiring a certain competence and training employees.

System Design

Extension of Learning Networks• Aligning lifelong learning with business processes:

The problems we faced today typically involve a combination of social and technological issues and require active collaboration in business processes and consideration of multiple perspectives. It is necessary to provide a socio-technical environment with business processes to enhance learning experience.

• Aligning lifelong learning with employability:

Currently, individuals/companies go to the labor market when they need a job/employee. The employment process with abstract description of jobs may be not effective and efficient. It is necessary to help lifelong learners to choose learning goals/needs/activities in the interest of employability and to support employment with appropriate evidences.

System Design

• Real estate development is a business

Typically, developers purchase a tract of land, determine the marketing of the property, develop the building program and design, obtain the necessary public approvals and financing, build the structure, and lease, manage, and ultimately sell it.

• The development process requires skills of many professionals architects, landscape architects, and site planners to address project design; market consultants to determine demand and a project's economics; attorneys to handle agreements and government approvals; environmental consultants and soils engineers to analyze a site's physical limitations and environmental impacts; surveyors to provide legal descriptions of a property; and lenders to provide financing.

• Development is a team effort. A development team can be put together in different ways.

System Design

• Competence models• Competence profiles

• Jobs• Business process models• Roles• Activities• Required competences to perform activities

• Units of learning• Units of assessment• Units of tasks

System Design

Identifying learning goal

Planning learning project

Learning by executingproject

Assessing performance

Competence models

Business process models

Personal learning goal/ competence gaps

Learning project plan/Selected unit of task

Situated guidance/ Evidence records

Competence records/Updated CPs

Personal competence profiles

Units of learning/assessment/

task

System Design

Support Employment

• Job is described by referring BPMs/competences/roles/tasks

• Job application refers to BPMs/competences/roles/tasks as well

• Persons and companies are steadily in the labor market

Challenges

• Producing accurate and reliable competence information

• Supporting lifelong learners to make informed decisions

• Supporting visualization and operation of competence information objects

The Problem of Unreliability of Competence Information

• In theory, it is difficult to represent, measure, and interpret competence because competence is a very big subject complicated by very strong opinions and cultural traditions (Ostyn, 2005).

• In the system, personal competence information comes from different types of sources (e.g., self-/peer assessment, target competences of unit of learning, results of online assessment, and Latent Semantic Analysis tools) and different sources at different time. The competence information may be inconsistent.

An Information Fusion Approach to Tracing and Management of Competence Information

Humans continually integrate data from our senses to make inferences about the external world

[P.K. Varshney].

Information fusion, as techniques, is relatively new and is multi-disciplinary by essence. [D.L. Hall]

An Information Fusion Approach to Tracing and Management of Competence Information

The Definitions of Information Fusion in Literature:• Theory, techniques, and tools for exploiting the synergy in the

information acquired from multiple sources: sensors, databases, intelligence sources, humans, etc.

• A process dealing with the association, correlation and combination of data and information from multiple sources to achieve refined position and identity estimates, and complete and timely assessments of situations and threats, and their significance. The process is characterized by continuous refinements of its estimation, and the evaluation of the need for additional sources, or modification of the process itself, to achieve improved results.

An Information Fusion Approach to Tracing and Management of Competence Information

• Information fusion is useful for several objectives such as: detection, recognition, identification, tracking, change detection, and decision making.

• These objectives are encountered in many application domains such as defense, robotics, medicine, space, transportation, law enforcement, homeland security, and weather forecast.

• Automatic competence information tracking and management?

Conclusions

• It is important and benefit to align lifelong learning with business processes and employability

• It is technically possible to develop an integrated competence-based system to support lifelong learning and employability

• Many difficulties have to be overcome in order to realize such a system

Thank for your attention!

Questions?