Skill and competency framework interoperability

The objective in this section is to make a case for the importance of this area, and to outline a plausible strategy.

Some reference points:

• The Skills Profiling Web Service (SPWS) project
• The Skills Framework for the Information Age

An e-portfolio system could be seen as a "consumer" of pre-defined competency framework web service, or there could be a more interactive relationship between the two, e.g. use the e-portfolio as a knowledge base to elicit emerging standards. This could be seen as a parallel with "folksonomies" as opposed to semantic web.

Need: for skill/competency evidence to be portable across e-portfolio systems. Some kind of mutual recognition is required, such as would be offered by using common skills or competency frameworks.

If there is no way to relate skills in different frameworks, users must re-describe their skills for each set of people using a different framework; possibly having to go through very lengthy process of reconnecting evidence for each one.

Strategy: Consider using Topic Maps or Semantic Web technology more generally for: skill/competency frameworks; curriculum; Extend that use to cover personal knowledge; indexing e-portfolio objects/writings. Build on SPWS work to identify the fuller infrastructure needed.

Questions:

• How important is the currency of a current framework? How often is it updated? What happens to currently used frameworks when they are updated?
• How do we use current practice to inform competency frameworks update?
• How can the importance of skill framework compatibility be conveyed to all concerned?
• If the suggested strategy is plausible, how can it be taken forward?
• Could an e-portfolio approach offer the equivalent of folksonomies to skills frameworks?
• Could communities of practice develop such "folkcompetencies"?
• Is it plausible that a folksonomic approach could ever produce a framework which is usable in practice for the portability of competency claims and evidence?