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Competency data standards resources

Competency data standards & specifications

The competency related resources on this page are all about technical standards to capture competency data and standards for competency data management. Rather than "competency standards" as inventories of competencies, these are technical standards about capturing, exchanging and managing data about competency, or technical standards about capturing and representing the competency models defined in a "competency standard". And in case you wonder, there is a connection with SCORM.

Reusable Competency Definitions

IEEE Reusable Competency Definitions (RCD) standard draft

The W20 working group of the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (http://ieeeltsc.org/wg20Comp/) has been working toward an IEEE standard to capture reusable competency definitions, based on the IMS Global Learning Consortium's RDCEO specification. This is IEEE project P1484.20.1.
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Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective (RDCEO)

The IMS Global Learning Consortium (http://imsglobal.org/) released in October 2002 a specification for Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective (RDCEO) which contains an information model, a best practices document and an XML binding. This document is the foundation document for the IEEE standard project.
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Competency records and other XML exchanges

HR-XML Consortium

The HR-XML Consortium (http://hr-xml.org/) publishes and develops XML schemas for competency records, competency evidence, etc.
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Competency related proposals and white papers

Ecosystem of competency management

Click for full size image of Ecology of CompetenciesThis diagram is an attempt to show how learning management, training management and performance support systems can be aligned with business goals as part of an "ecosystem of competencies".
- Claude Ostyn, Last updated: 6 September 2005
View online (32K)

Competency Data for Training Automation

Described in more detail in the Learning Technology: The Big Picture page on this site.

Thumbnail of diagram of a competency recordThis paper proposes a simplified framework that uses simple, standard data formats and services to help automate the collection and adaptive assessment of individual and group competencies. The framework also supports the automation of skill gap analysis as well as the automation of adaptive performance support. It also provides for auditing, general security, confidentiality and privacy requirements. It takes into account credibility issues and the sanity measures necessary to avoid corruption by unreliable data.

This white paper may result in specific proposals for new standards or for inclusion in existing standards projects.
- Claude Ostyn, Last updated: 12 May 2005
PDF file (60 pages - 1.2MB - right-click the link to download)
View online (best viewed at 1024x768 resolution or better; some graphic details hard to read)

Competency data issues

SCORM, repositories and competencies

Click to view a proposed big picture of competency data automationThis one page document is excerpted from the Competency Data Framework document above, which proposes a simplified, service-oriented framework to support functional requirements for competency tracking and personalized assessment, learning and training. The framework includes legacy data, processes and policies as well as new digital objects and systems. It also leverages standards like SCORM, digital object identifiers, the emerging standards for repositories, and the emerging CORDRA specification for the registration and resolution of identifiers for content objects. This helps provide a complete, streamlined solution that does more with less.
- Claude Ostyn, Last updated: 21 April 2005
View online (best viewed at 1024x768 resolution or better)

Distilling Competency Data

This paper proposes a simplified process to distill competency information for individuals and teams, using simple standard data structures and a robust process. It discusses distillation of legacy, formal assessment and SCORM competency data.
- Claude Ostyn, (draft in progress) Last updated: 15 March 2005; incorporated into the framework document above.
PDF document (565K) View online (HTML)

Illustrated use cases for standardized competency data

Assessing and building competencies for a team project

Click for Supporting project management requirements use case document. Use case exploring how training and performance support can be planned to align with project requirements.
- Claude Ostyn, Last updated: 17 October 2005
PDF document (242K)

Recruitment screening and selection

Use case exploring how standardized competency data can be used to support the recruitment specification, screening and selection process.
- Claude Ostyn, Last updated: 17 October 2005
PDF document (162K)

Proposal for a Simple Reusable Competency Map standard

Different maps of the same competency spaceThis is a proposal for a Reusable Competency Map standard draft. Reusable Competency Maps (also introduced in the framework document above) allow the capture and interoperability of the relationships between Reusable Competency Definitions. They can be used, for example, to represent the competency requirements for a job, personal competency profiles, competency requirements derived from a technical manual, or mappings between competency models. This document is posted to invite comments and collaboration or coordination with other people interested in this or similar proposals. Includes XML binding sample.
- Claude Ostyn, (draft in progress) Last updated: 24 February 2006
PDF document (453K) A Microsoft Word version is available on request.
Zip archive of XML schema (.xsd) and 3 sample xml files (9K)

Previous version, out of date. Last updated: 17 November 2005
PDF document (406K) A Microsoft Word version is available on request.

Service Oriented Architecture for Competency-based Lifelong Learning and Personal Development

Claude Ostyn, (draft in progress) Last updated: 11 October 2006
This draft contains a terminology section and a preliminary list of services and their interfaces. When complete, this document will describe a compact framework for a service-oriented architecture for the competency data aspects of lifelong learning management systems. Lifelong learning management requires extraordinary data longevity as well as auditing and confidence management. The ability to deal with data that may come from many non-standard sources and may be based on opinion rather than objective facts has to be built into the framework. The described framework supports competency models such as would be found in a job competency profile or educational plan. It also supports the capture and storage of personal or group competency data of various levels of quality and trustworthiness. It facilitates but does not specify security and privacy protections for data as well as processes. The framework enables a number of application scenarios, such as collection of personal competency profiles, remapping of information from a curriculum vitae against a standardized competency model, matching of information from a curriculum vitae against competency requirements for a job, or skill gap analysis to determine training needs.
Current draft (PDF - 262K)

Simple Competency Related Data Management

Proposal for a standards based "building blocks" approach to competency and assessment management.
- Claude Ostyn, (incomplete draft, to be subsumed and superseded by document above) Last updated: 8 January 2005.
PowerPoint (211K)

Competency data standards examples

Reusable Competency Definitions

The O*NET US occupational database is a large model of all the occupations in the US econonomy. Along with the descriptions of all the occupation, it lists the basic skills required for each occupation. However, it does not have a list of skills definitions as such.

Reusable competency definitions extracted from O*NET

Definitions extracted from the O*NET database, to illustrate how legacy competency models can be recycled using the draft Reusable Competency Definition standard. (Interactive demo: View online)

Useful competency data related links

O*NET US occupational database home page

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