Educational and Occupational Credentials in schema.org

[Phil Barker]

Hello all, one important aspect of education that is not represented well in schema.org is educational and occupational credentials, i.e. diplomas, academic degrees, certifications, etc [Terms]. These act as an important link between outcomes of educational courses, people, and occupations / job roles. I have raised an issue on github with the aim of addressing this gap in schema.org [issue#1779]

There has been a fair amount of work outside of schema.org on describing these, notably by the CredentialEngine.org [CTDL],  ConnectingCredentials.org and the Open Badges [BadgeAlliance]. There is also work ongoing about how to deal with wider Verifiable Claims [VCWG] such as the claim by and individual to have an academic degree. Also, there are many frameworks which describe credentials in terms of the level and extent of the knowledge and competencies they accredit.

What that work has made clear is that there is some complexity in describing educational and occupational credentials. While I don't expect doing so in schema.org would require more than a few additional terms, the relationship between these terms and things like verifiable claims, competencies, course objectives etc, needs to be clear. I suspect we will need a group such as a W3C Community Group to sort these out.

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on this...

Regards, Phil.

[issue#1779] https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/1779

[Terms] http://connectingcredentials.org/common-language-work-group-glossary/

[CTDL] http://credreg.net/ctdl/schema

[BadgeAlliance] https://www.badgealliance.org/
    see also https://www.imsglobal.org/sites/default/files/Badges/OBv2p0/index.html

[VCWG] https://www.w3.org/2017/vc/WG/

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Phil Barker. http://people.pjjk.net/phil
PJJK Limited: technology to enhance learning; information systems for education.

PJJK Limited is registered in the UK as a private limited company, number SC569282.

[Jim Goodell]

I’m interested and agree this would be valuable.
Jim Goodell

[Vicki Tardif]

I agree a group would be useful. Do you have a time frame for putting this together?

- Vicki

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[Dan Brickley]

On 27 October 2017 at 17:42, Vicki Tardif <vta...@google.com> wrote:

I agree a group would be useful. Do you have a time frame for putting this together?

+1 this topic has been bubbling under for years, it feels like the right time to address it, tying together the edu and jobs strands of schema.org vocabulary.

I'd be very supportive of a W3C CG on this. Are you offering to chair again, Phil? :) The Course schema CG set a great precedent...

Dan

[Phil Barker]

On 27/10/17 16:42, Vicki Tardif wrote:

I agree a group would be useful. Do you have a time frame for putting this together?

Thanks Vicki.
As for time scale, assuming there are no objections, I was thinking of initiating a W3C Community Group next week. Difficult to be sure how long it would take to put the proposal together. I want to agree a set of use cases to address within about a month, hopefully simple ones, and would hope to make progress on them over the course of about three months.

Phil

[Vicki Tardif]

I agree that starting sooner rather than later makes sense.

I am happy to help in whatever way I can.

- Vicki

[Phil Barker]

Thanks Dan, that's very kind.

I am getting financial support from the Credential Engine which means that I have time to chair the group and put time into the work generally.  Very happy for other people to contribute too, of course. The plan is to follow the same approach as we did for Courses, so I'm pleased you liked that :)

Phil

[Joshua Marks]

+1! This intersection of competencies, competency assertions, badges and credentials is critically important to the evaluation and evolution of educational attainment and professional certification. Happy to help however I can.

Joshua Marks

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[Steve Midgley]

+1 - Very needed work. I'm very interested and motivated to work on this as part of the Credential Registry work I'm doing for the Credential Engine community. We're working right now on semantic linking between competencies and credentials, so this is very timely. Keep us all posted where we can get involved!

Thanks as always Phil for moving us all forward..

Steve

[Phil Barker]

Thank you for all your support regarding this idea. I have proposed a W3C Community Group to address it.

It now needs the support of four other people for it to happen. To support it you must have a W3C account, and then visit the Community Groups page, and scroll down a little to the proposed groups section. Click on the button to support the Educational and Occupational Credentials in schema.org Community Group.

If you do not have a W3C account, registering for one is free, but you do need to give an assurance that you will not be contributing an IP that cannot be only licensed under W3C's terms. This is appropriate for contributing work to schema.org.

--Phil

W3 Community Groups page: https://www.w3.org/community/

PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited company, number SC569282.

[Phil Barker]

Well that was quick :) The Educational and Occupational Credentials in schema.org Community Group has now been set up.

If you would like to contribute to the work of the group (or even just lurk and follow what we do) please join it by visiting https://www.w3.org/community/eocred-schema/join

Thank you. Phil