EDITORIAL
Learning Networks for Lifelong
Competence Development
This special issue has been the result of the First TENCompetence Workshop with
the title ‘Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development’. The event took
place in Sofia, Bulgaria, 30 – 31 March 2006. TENCompetence is a large integrated
project funded by the European Commission (IST/TEL027087, http://www.
tencompetence.org/) with the aim of building an integrated set of methods and open
source tools to support the lifelong development of competencies by individuals in
our society. The idea is that the infrastructure that we develop will enable individuals,
teams and organisations to:
1. Assess the competencies they have acquired through formal, informal and non-
formal learning throughout life. These competencies are mapped on competence
profiles that are established and agreed upon in formal and informal communities
of practice (professions, associations, teams, etc.). The assessment of compe-
tencies and mapping on profiles allow persons to reflect on their current situation
and to formulate learning objectives for the future.
2. Create personal development plans to meet the requirements of certain
competence profiles (or to study for a specific competence). These development
plans can be shared with others and people can build their own plans on the basis
of the plans of others. This includes the exchange of experience in executing the
plan.
3. Create, select and share actions that comprise components of the personal
development plan. These actions can have the form of a unit of learning
(e.g., based on IMS Learning Design or any other courses available), single
learning activities or a programme provided by an educational or training
institution.
4. Find people with similar interests to share experience, actions and personal
development plans.
5. Be triggered when new competencies are required for a job or other type of
profile that you already master. In this way you have triggers to be kept up to
date in your profession.
Interactive Learning Environments
Vol. 15, No. 2, August 2007, pp. 101 – 105
ISSN 1049-4820 (print)/ISSN 1744-5191 (online)/07/020101-05 � 2007 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/10494820701424643
6. Perform the actual learning activities in a learning environment.
7. Provide effective and efficient support to learners.
8. Provide support for the sharing of all types of learning resources, experience and
quality ratings.
TENCompetence is conducting RTD activities in the following domains:
. personal competence development in a lifelong perspective;
. knowledge resource sharing and management;
. creation and (re-)use of learning activities and units of learning using IMS
Learning Design;
. the creation and sharing of personal competence development plans;
. the establishment of learning networks for lifelong competence development.
The infrastructure that the project develops could provide an significant push
towards further integration and collaboration in support of the European knowledge
society. It can be used at all levels of learning: primary, secondary and tertiary
education, continuing education, adult and company training and all forms of
informal learning.
The Objective of the Workshop
The objective of the workshop was to identify and analyse current research and
technologies in those fields that provide the building blocks for the development
of an open source infrastructure that contains all the services needed to support
individuals, teams and organisations to (further) develop their competencies, using
all the distributed knowledge resources, learning activities, units of learning and
learning routes/programmes that are available online. This includes open, usable
and accessible services for:
. the creation, sharing, discovery and use of knowledge resources, learning
activities, units of learning and learning paths by any individual, team or
organisation;
. the development, use, monitoring and maintenance of competence frameworks
for the different professions or domains of knowledge;
. the assessment of competencies;
. the registration, use and sharing of personal data (profiles, portfolios, certificates);
. the discovery of suitable learning resources adapted to the user’s needs and
profile;
. the support of users in navigating all the possible learning resources to build
specific competencies;
. the support of users in learning in new fields and the support of those people who
provide the support (e.g., by providing monitoring services and help with email
handling).
102 Editorial
The Papers
The papers were all reviewed by three reviewers from the programme committee. The
authors of the best papers were also invited to provide an elaborated version of the
paper for this special issue. In total we received 36 papers, of which 9 were accepted
by the reviewers for this special issue. The categories of research in which these papers
can be positioned are as follows.
1. The validation of brokering of competence, issues of trust and technology
(Richards et al.). This paper is about the policy on and technical issues of one
aspect of an ePortfolio system (the record of learning component). The basic
issue discussed is the validation of human competence.
2. Matchmaking in learning networks: bringing learners together to share knowl-
edge (Kester et al.). This paper studies ad hoc transient communities of lifelong
learners who have a question and are searching for peers or experts that can help
them.
3. Navigational support in lifelong learning: enhancing effectiveness through
indirect social navigation (Janssen et al.). This paper deals with the issue of
how to help learners to navigate the many different learning resources that are
available. The approach taken is based on self-organization principles (indirect
social interaction, use of pheromones) using a collaborative filtering engine to
recommend the most suitable learning activity.
4. Developing a common metamodel for competence description (Sampson et al.).
This paper analyses the requirements for a continuing and interoperable record
of competencies. It analyses existing standards and matches these to the
requirements for the EuroPass Language Passport as a case study. Some issues in
the current standards are identified and solutions are proposed.
5. The eight learning events model: a pedagogic conceptual tool supporting
diversification of learning methods (Verpoorten et al.). This paper introduces a
high level classification of learning activities into eight groups that can be
combined to create units of learning (courses, lessons, practicals, etc.). This is
the first article in a series that deals with the issue of learning design.
6. How to represent adaptation in e-learning with IMS Learning Design (Burgos
et al.). This paper studies the possibilities of using the the IMS Learning Design
specification to create adaptive learning designs.
7. CopperCore service integration (Vogten et al.). This paper deals with the issue
that there are several e-learning standards available for learning design, testing,
competencies, etc., but that there are no common principles available on how to
combine these different services into a single learning environment. A solution
(CCSI) has been proposed, developed and tested.
8. Using IMS Learning Design to model curricula (Tattersall et al.). This article
studies the similarities and differences between the structuring of learning
activities within a course and the structuring of courses within a curriculum.
The hypothesis is that the IMS Learning Design specification that is developed to
Editorial 103
support the first issue (learning activities within a course) can also be used to
structure curricula.
9. Positioning of learners in learning networks with content, metadata and ontologies
(Kalz et al.). This paper analyses the issue of automation of the assessment of
the starting point (the position) of lifelong learners in a learning network.
Three approaches are compared: a content-based approach, a metadata-
based approach and an ontologies-based approach.
In Conclusion
The TENCompetence project is at the beginning of its development, but the papers
in this special issue all provide valuable input for the domain of lifelong competence
development. As guest editors we want to thank the following persons for their
contributions to this special issue. First of all we want to thank the members of the
programme committee who all worked hard to review the papers and provide the
authors with valuable comments. The members of the committee were:
Heidrun Allert, Austria, [email protected]
Terry Anderson, Canada, [email protected]
Albert Angehrn, France, [email protected]
Miguel Arjona Villanueva, Spain, [email protected]
Sue Bennett, Australia, [email protected]
Fabrizio Cardinali, Italy, [email protected]
Juan Manuel Dodero, Spain, [email protected]
Peter Goodyear, Australia, [email protected]
Dai Griffith, Spain, [email protected]
Barry Harper, Australia, [email protected]
Roger Hartley, UK, [email protected]
Kinshuk, New Zealand, [email protected]
Ralf Klamma, Germany, [email protected]
Ruud Lemmers, The Netherlands, [email protected]
Oleg Liber, UK, [email protected]
David Merrill, USA, [email protected]
Patrick McAndrew, UK, [email protected]
Ambjorn Naeve, Sweden, [email protected]
Wolfgang Nejdl, Germany, [email protected]
Gilbert Pacquette, Canada, [email protected]
Griff Richards, Canada, [email protected]
Demetrios Sampson, Greece, [email protected]
Judith Schoonenboom, The Netherlands, [email protected]
Bernard Scott, UK, [email protected]
Peter Scott, UK, [email protected]
Marcus Specht, The Netherlands, [email protected]
Mike Spector, USA, [email protected]
104 Editorial
Colin Tattersall, The Netherlands, [email protected]
Luk Vervenne, Belgium, [email protected]
Martin Weller, UK, [email protected]
Martin Wolpers, Germany, [email protected]
David Wiley, USA, [email protected].
Furthermore, we would like to thank all the authors and submitters of papers to the
special issue for their contributions. We also would like to thank the local organizers
of workshops in Sofia, Assoc. Prof. Dr Roumen Nikolov, Stanimira Yordanova and
Magdalena Sotirova. We would also like to thank Dr Bernard Scott and Dr Simon
Shurville of Cranfield University and Sally Smith of Taylor and Francis for
coordinating the issue on behalf of Interactive Learning Environments. And last,
but not least, we would like to thank Mieke Haemers for her secretarial support in the
editing of this special issue.
Krassen Stefanova and Rob Koperb
aUniversity of Sofia, Bulgaria; bOpen University of The Netherlands
Editorial 105
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