LEAP ability

Belongs to LEAP 2.0 > classes

Working definition
A general and impersonal definition of some area of knowledge, skill, competence or similar personal attribute, able to be used by anyone as a reference for a claim to possess the ability, or for a goal to achieve the ability, or as an intermediary for exploring pathways in education, employment or life.

Explanation
An ability can be at any level of granularity, from very general concepts like "work-readiness" to small fragments of competency such as the ability to use styles in a particular word processing package.

Generally, abilities are best defined externally, by some body that has been set up to define them. (Good examples are the Sector Skills Agencies in the UK.) Where the ability is defined externally with an unambiguous and informative URL/URI, there is no great need for an item to represent it within the portfolio, but instead it can be referred to directly by its URL

There are scenarios where it would be useful to define an ability within a portfolio. For these cases, the LEAP ability class is provided, together with a set of predicates to relate an internal definition to external definitions. The information in the LEAP ability item could be as little as a title - a name for the ability - and a URI in place of content. This would at least ensure that the name of the ability remained user-defined within the portfolio.

Alternative terms

 * Ability
 * Competence
 * Competency
 * Educational objective
 * (Intended) learning outcome
 * Knowledge
 * Learning objective
 * Personal quality
 * Skill

What it is not
A ability definition by itself is neither a claim to ability, nor evidence for it, nor a goal to achieve it.

Predicates
See the notes on LEAP triples for an explanation of what forms of triples there are, and how they are represented here.
 * "Direct" predicates are those where this class is in the domain of the predicate (but its superclass is not).
 * "Inverse" predicates, if given for reference, are those where the class is in the range, but not the domain, of the predicate.
 * "=" means the predicate expects a literal object: the type of literal may be specified here.
 * "&rarr;" means the predicate expects an object URL referring to an instance of the given class(es).
 * "&larr;" is used for inverse predicates, and means that triples may exist with instances of the given class(es) as subject and this class as object.

Inherited
from pattern

Direct

 * is outcome of &rarr; LEAP activity, only in the sense of designed intended learning outcome, at impersonal level

Subclasses
Different kinds of ability could be distinguished.

LEAP2A
See LEAP2A ability which LEAP draws from.

IMS EP
See the eP spec as a whole

HR-XML
HR-XML has a Competency spec

Existing places information held
See LEAP2A ability

LUSID
LUSID has a default skills framework, to do with transferable skills, though any skills framework can in principle be used within the LUSID archictecture. Learners rate their activities (LUSID: experiences) against skills, using a 3 point scale for the amount they reckon that activity used that skill - a lot, a little, not at all, and an extra point indicating a good example of the use of that skill.

Any more? Add them like this
(and if you can, add a link to more information about how information can be obtained from it, and in what format)

General discussion
This term is a tricky one, both because there are many closely related definitions extant, and because it is often unclear how the information is used in a portfolio context. This needs to be clarified immediately here at the outset.

There are two different approaches to terminology. One seeks to make subtle distinctions, and the other lumps everything together. The current specifications we have, related to the portfolio domain, all lump together: this is explicitly true of IMS LIP, IMS ePortfolio, UKLeaP and HR-XML. Because drawing clear distinctions is difficult if not impossible, knowledge, skill, aptitude, competence, and other personal qualities are lumped together. Given the understanding that no such fine or subtle distinctions are going to be drawn here, we can move on to the use in portfolios of the concept.

It is commonly recognised that just putting something like "Java" under a "skills" heading on a CV does not convey a great deal. To convey something definite about an ability which a person has, ideally the competent person needs to detail a claim to ability, perhaps to be certified with a recognised qualification, perhaps to be attested by an authority, perhaps only self-certified, but in any case where the method of assessment, if any, is spelled out, and the results of the assessment are given.

Also relevant to CVs, and even more so for PDP and educational and careers guidance, is the plan or desire to attain a particular ability. This could be very specific or quite general. I might like to improve my general fitness in an unspecified way, or I might want to pass a particular exam in Turkish next summer.

Thirdly, I might want to consider the options for acquiring an ability without actually committing to it. If becoming a nurse involves some GCSEs that I haven't got, I might want to think about my ability in mathematics before either claiming anything or committing to a course of study.

Competence is the factor which is common to all of these. We want to be able to refer unambiguously to abilities so that we can link these uses together. But the abilities by themselves won't appear in a CV - they only appear as either claimed or aimed for. Thus a personal portfolio is not the place to store definitions of abilities. Rather, a portfolio could store a bag of references to abilities which are relevant to the individual. These references could just be URLs, and the titles and details of the abilities can be found through those URLs.

Competence definitions themselves should probably not be held on a portfolio system, as they are general purpose. For further detail, see discussions of competence frameworks, such as these working notes by Simon Grant

Issues
A note can go here of any issues that are not represented above, which can then be discussed on the list or under the discussion tab.