Linking to Competencies in LRMI

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Hugh Paterson III

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Sep 7, 2023, 4:30:32 AM9/7/23
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Greetings,

I am doing some curriculum development and description. I am also working with LRMI. Several issues I am encountering: 

1. I see that https://schema.org/Syllabus and https://schema.org/Course have the property "teaches" which interestingly takes either of the values 'defined term' or 'text'. I would have expected these to also take a URI to a competency. 

2. The alignment object in LRMI seems to be the way to link to Competencies, if one is only using LRMI within their metadata schema. However, if one is using all available properties and attributes of schema.org, other metadata options begin to seem relevant. For example some types have https://schema.org/competencyRequired which would be a logical link to competencies. Considering https://schema.org/competencyRequired should point to a competency, how exactly are competencies modeled in Schema.org? The linked old example https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/LRMI/Properties/teachesCompetencies has an illustration of 'Type: http://schema.org/competency' but this doesn't seem to be valid schema.org. The term competency is used a lot on schema.org's website but I don't see any types/properties/attributes for identifying something explicitly as a competency. (Using a defined term structure seems one way to go about doing this but also seems to minimize the reusability of the metadata by burying the structure). 

3. Can anyone point me in the direction of some competency information model structures? E.g., an item of the type competency seems to have the following: "Name", "ID", "Definition", "Level". If a defined list is the only way to model a competency, then what should the values in the defined list be.... or what are some of the 'popular' values.... 



Kind regards,
Hugh Paterson III



Phil Barker

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Sep 7, 2023, 7:45:02 AM9/7/23
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Hiya Hugh

On 07/09/2023 09:30, Hugh Paterson III wrote:
Greetings,

I am doing some curriculum development and description. I am also working with LRMI. Several issues I am encountering: 

1. I see that https://schema.org/Syllabus and https://schema.org/Course have the property "teaches" which interestingly takes either of the values 'defined term' or 'text'. I would have expected these to also take a URI to a competency. 

URI is a valid value for any schema.org property, it's just not always listed (see the Conformance section at https://schema.org/docs/datamodel.html ). Of course it is moot as to how a URI value is interpreted, most likely it will just be treated as a link, unless you have an application that does otherwise.


2. The alignment object in LRMI seems to be the way to link to Competencies, if one is only using LRMI within their metadata schema.
However, if one is using all available properties and attributes of schema.org, other metadata options begin to seem relevant. For example some types have https://schema.org/competencyRequired which would be a logical link to competencies. Considering https://schema.org/competencyRequired should point to a competency, how exactly are competencies modeled in Schema.org?

Defined Term is the closest schema.org has to a way of describing a competency. You can use name and description for the competency name and definition and termCode for the coded notation (if there is one). DefinedTermSet would be the Competency framework. Alignment Object is also possible, but was designed for the case when either there was no other way of representing what was being aligned to, or it was necessary to say something about the alignment itself.


The linked old example https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/LRMI/Properties/teachesCompetencies has an illustration of 'Type: http://schema.org/competency' but this doesn't seem to be valid schema.org. The term competency is used a lot on schema.org's website but I don't see any types/properties/attributes for identifying something explicitly as a competency. (Using a defined term structure seems one way to go about doing this but also seems to minimize the reusability of the metadata by burying the structure).

That is very old, and unmaintained. LRMI / Schema.org has changed quite a bit since it was created.


3. Can anyone point me in the direction of some competency information model structures? E.g., an item of the type competency seems to have the following: "Name", "ID", "Definition", "Level". If a defined list is the only way to model a competency, then what should the values in the defined list be.... or what are some of the 'popular' values....



Kind regards,
Hugh Paterson III



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Stuart Sutton

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Sep 7, 2023, 10:47:24 AM9/7/23
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Hugh, I would add one refinement to what Phil says in response to your question -- the distinction between "defining" a competency and "referencing" a competency. The definedTerm property in schema.org is useful for referencing while Phil's enumeration in #3 are data models for defining competencies. The data models in Phil's #3 all have properties (or classes) for defining relationships between competencies in a particular data model. Supporting referencing but not defining was a deliberate choice in schema.org meaning that a definedTerm points to a competency definition.  

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Hugh Paterson III

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Sep 10, 2023, 4:42:07 AM9/10/23
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Stuart,

Your clarification is really helpful... Does anyone know if there are any open platforms or content management systems for publishing competencies and competency models? In both my current project and a previous project this seems to be the big bottle neck as both projects have internal "competency banks" but wider adoption is desired and open publishing seems to the roadblock.

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Phil Barker

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Sep 15, 2023, 10:36:59 AM9/15/23
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On 10/09/2023 09:41, Hugh Paterson III wrote:
Stuart,

Your clarification is really helpful... Does anyone know if there are any open platforms or content management systems for publishing competencies and competency models? In both my current project and a previous project this seems to be the big bottle neck as both projects have internal "competency banks" but wider adoption is desired and open publishing seems to the roadblock.

Yes, thank you Stuart that is a really useful distinction.

Hugh, here are three examples of competency banks:

ASN  https://asn.desire2learn.com/resources/ASNJurisdiction

CASE Network https://casenetwork.imsglobal.org/cfdoc/

Credential Engine https://credentialfinder.org/ (select Competency Frameworks in the first drop down)

You might also be interested in software like CaSS https://github.com/cassproject/ and OSMT https://www.openskillsnetwork.org/osmt for managing competency definitions.

Hope this helps, Phil


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J Marks

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Sep 15, 2023, 10:43:19 AM9/15/23
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you can add to this www.opensalt.org  

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