RE: EOCred: Identify the level of a credential from Robby Robson on 2018-02-15 (public-eocred-schema@w3.org from February 2018)

From: Robby Robson <robby.robson@eduworks.com>
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 2018 09:12:10 -0500
To: Stuart Sutton <stuartasutton@gmail.com>, Fritz Ray <fritley@gmail.com>
Cc: public-eocred-schema@w3.org
Message-ID: <17fb1d0a7aac8fc2f99a94c0064f0ccd@mail.gmail.com>

Very quickly: In competency modelling, levels such as beginner,
intermediate, advanced are usually NOT different levels of the same
competency. As one progresses through them, one gathers NEW skill and does
not simply improve old skills. So in competency modelling, at least, these
are related but different competencies. To clarify this, we speak of
*performance
levels*, which are measurable, ordered levels of the same competency (in
rubrics, for example, “does not meet,” “meets,” and “exceeds”).

I don’t know whether that really applies to *credentials* however. I would
just caution about confusing labels such as “journeyman” or “master” which
I would call levels of *accomplishment* with levels of *performance*.

Robby Robson

*Eduworks*robby.robson@eduworks.com

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*From:* Stuart Sutton [mailto:stuartasutton@gmail.com]
*Sent:* Thursday, February 15, 2018 09:03
*To:* Fritz Ray <fritley@gmail.com>
*Cc:* public-eocred-schema@w3.org
*Subject:* Re: EOCred: Identify the level of a credential

Fritz, I agree that the notion of "level" can be complex, but need not be
so. I would eliminate your second and third notions because: (1) the second
would and should be identified as a distinct credential (Bachelor os
Science in Software Engineering); and (2) the third is not an inherent
characteristic of the credential (as work) but rather the level of an
awarded credential--e.g., "Joe earned his Bachelor of Science in Software
Engineering Summa Cum Laude".

As Phil has noted elsewhere, the European take on the latter might be
different since, I believe, there is a closer tie in identifying
credentials to level of accomplishment.

On Wed, Feb 14, 2018 at 9:10 PM, Fritz Ray <fritley@gmail.com> wrote:

I'll let Robby chime in and explain my understanding of Level better than I
can.

Level has at least three senses of the word that are applicable, that I
have found.

- There is a general sense of someone's capability as defined by a
level, such as a novice, beginner, intermediate, journeyman, advanced,
expert, professional, etc. *Sometimes* these have formal (but not
necessarily specific) definitions, but much of the time they are just
labels for a person's capability in that credential. They don't take much,
if any expertise to identify or understand though, and that makes them
useful to non-practitioners. I see this as being used more in competencies
and less in credentials, but I am including it for contrast.
- There's a formal and specific sense of someone's capability in breadth
and depth in this credential and a subset of more granular courses or other
competency granting things. These are most commonly ascribed to
credentials. A *Bachelor's of Science* in Software Engineering indicates
so many credit hours of mandatory technical, social, math, etc, so many
credit hours of elective classes, and additional projects. That is, the
credential's level indicates the courses and competencies obtained.

Note: It is often correct to think of these as different credentials,
since an Associate's degree and a Bachelor's degree have different
requirements, but they are both in the same domain, so thinking of them as
levels is common.
- And then there's a technical and specific sense of someone's
capability, which could be considered "SMART" -- Specific, Measurable,
Achievable, Realistic and Time-Oriented. A *Summa Cum Laude* Bachelor's
of Science in Software Engineering includes the implication of an algorithm
or rubric (in this case of the individual's GPA) and the measurement
against some thresholds (3.85 / 4.0 and above). Awards for Olympic
achievements like breaking the Olympic record, for instance, include this
sense.

Note: It is often impractical to think of these as different
credentials, since each Olympic record breaking credential would require a
different description for its specific 'credential'.

I don't pretend to have definitive nomenclature for each of these (and I'm
not sure anyone does), but "Naive/General Level, (Tiers, Ranks, Levels),
and Performance Level" tend to be accepted.

I'd describe the first definition with _just_ short strings or terms, the
middle definition with links to more specific credentials, and the latter
with some sort of performance profile, like a rubric, or performance
record, like the data indicating someone broke an Olympic record.

Note: The third definition may be outside current capabilities to describe.
I already accept this.

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 4:24 AM, Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk> wrote:

Thank you for all the discussion so far. I have tried to summarise where we
are with describing the level of a credential in a draft on the wiki
<https://www.w3.org/community/eocred-schema/wiki/User:Philbarker/Draft:Educational_level_of_a_credential>.
I have gone with direct references to terms that described educational
levels, without any AlignmentObjecting

In doing so I have tried not to refer to credentials explicitly, because I
think this property might be useful for Courses and learning resources in
general, but I am open to input on that if you think that it makes the
definition unnecessarily vague.

The main issue I see is whether educationalLevel is the right name. If it
is not, I suspect that Robbie has started writing his reply before reading
this far :) I am very open to wording from people involved in occupational
credentialling and workplace learning for wording that is more inviting to
their community.

As ever, all comments welcome. Phil

[draft educationaLevel]
https://www.w3.org/community/eocred-schema/wiki/User:Philbarker/Draft:Educational_level_of_a_credential

On 07/02/18 12:27, Phil Barker wrote:

The next use case I would like to discuss is around identifying the level
of an educational / occupational credential currently stated as: it should
be possible to search or review results of a search by specific credential
level, e.g. post-graduate, High school, entry, intermediate, advanced.

To do this we need to be able to relate an educational / occupational
credential to a description or representation of an educational level. I
see two options for this:

A. we do the same as is currently done for learning resources and courses
and use the educationalAlignement
<http://schema.org/educationalAlignment>property
to point to an AlignmentObject <http://schema.org/AlignmentObject> which in
turn points to and/or describes an educational level.

B. we add a new property educationalLevel which could point to either an
AlignmentObject or directly to a DefinedTerm for the educational level.

I'm interested in anyone's thoughts on which they would prefer.

=A bit of background to the AlignmentObject.=

- the educationalAlignment / AligmentObject pairing is useful when you
don't want to pre-define and thus limit types of alignments involved by
having a few properties for specific alignments (that's at the root of why
LRMI introduced it, here we have a specific alignment type we know we want.)

- the AlignmentObject is useful when the thing to which you are aligning is
not properly defined a a firstclass schema.org object; it allows you to
refer to it by description

- the AlignmentObject is useful when you want to say things about the
alignment itself (e.g. describe who asserts the alignment is true and how
they came to this judgement) though this ability is under developed and to
my knowledge not used

- research <https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3054160>[*] into LRMI
schema.org markup in the wild suggests that the AlignmentObject (and
relatively more complex / abstract approaches in general) are used less
frequently than simpler property - value [literal] relationships.

- the Open Badges spec uses an alignment property to point from a badge
class to an AlignmentObject representing objectives or educational
standards (which is slightly different to this use case, though we several
use cases for aligning to competencies)

Please let me know your thoughts.

Phil

* open access copy of that paper at
https://blogs.pjjk.net/phil/confpaper/analysing-improving-embedded-markup-learning-resources-web/

Phil Barker <http://people.pjjk.net/phil>. http://people.pjjk.net/phil
PJJK Limited <https://www.pjjk.co.uk>: technology to enhance learning;
information systems for education.
CETIS LLP: a cooperative consultancy for innovation in education technology.

PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited company, number
SC569282.
CETIS is a co-operative limited liability partnership, registered in
England number OC399090

Stuart A. Sutton, Metadata Consultant

Associate Professor Emeritus, University of Washington

Information School

Email: stuartasutton@gmail.com

Skype: sasutton

Received on Thursday, 15 February 2018 14:12:39 UTC