Skills and competence opportunities

Facilitators: Simon Grant, Adam Cooper

Wednesday, 13th March
Timings are approximate and subject to alteration as the session unfolds!

09:15 &mdash; background
The idea for this session is simple: get participants into the mindset where a large number of frameworks of skill, competence, etc. have been represented in a standard format and published electronically. To get people in the mood, we could quote partly from the new European Rethinking Education strategy. So, without getting bogged down by the current reality that there is very little there in any standard format, what possibilities does this open up? What if?

Envisage a world with (semantic) web-enabled learning outcome and competence definitions and structures. Imagine...
 * every learning or work opportunity or resource has
 * URIs of intended learning outcomes (links displayed to people)
 * URIs of work-based competences contributed towards (also with links)
 * URIs of competence pre-requisites
 * every electronic certificate has URIs for achievements and attainments
 * any electronic portfolio can allow a learner to claim attainment of competences, linking through their URIs
 * for any common job, profession, role, etc., frameworks or structures are published with URIs.

09:30 &mdash; personal interest introductions
Each person will be invited to introduce themselves and their broad areas of interest briefly.

09:50 &mdash; Short presentations
All these presentations will link to the role of a full skill/competency infrastructure. So far:
 * Paul Richardson: "Learning Objects: life after death?"
 * Alan Paull:     "Connecting courses to jobs"
 * Niall Barr:     "Effective peer endorsement"
 * Terry McAndrew: "Skills and Competence opportunities for Students with Disabilities"
 * More offers are invited. Time for each may depend on the number of volunteers here.

10:30 &mdash; quick brainstorm of topics for elaboration
Having heard personal interests and presentations, pairs or threes will be in a good position to think up possible areas to flesh out visions for. Two pure guesses could be: but more interesting, perhaps something different?
 * a service showing pathways for learners from where they are to where they want to be
 * a really effective employment system

11:30 &mdash; choice of groups and small group work
Simple voting for most popular ideas. Small groups formed around the two, three or four most popular topics, to get groups of 5 to 8 people.

Small groups will be asked to create a flip-chart presentation of their future scenario, perhaps including
 * how known requirements will be better satisfied in their chosen area
 * what new opportunities (will) have opened up
 * how developments of infrastructure (will) have enabled these scenarios.

12:30 &mdash; presentation of ideas
Each small group to present ideas to others.

The key ideas will feed in to reporting on the session.