EOCred: Credentials and competences

Hello again.

We have several use cases relating to the competences that an 
educational / occupational credential requires. Does adapting the skills 
<http://pending.schema.org/skills> ('skills required to fulfill this 
role.') from the JobPosting fulfil our need?


The use case / requirements we have are

  * Individuals should be able to search for and find credentials that
    best address competencies they wish to attain.
  * Individuals should be able to search and find credentials that best
    match competencies that the individual posses and wishes to be
    recognized
  * Employers should able to search for and find credentials that
    address the competencies required of an employee.
  * [having identified a credential] It should be possible to identify
    the competencies required in order to obtain a credential.

Also, knowing the competences required to earn a credential would help 
someone find relevant learning resources / opportunities, i.e. those 
which had similar competencies as learning outcomes.


Currently, there is no means in schema.org to describe competencies. 
There is a lot of work going on in different forums around the 
description of forums, and some of us have ideas for how the proposed 
Defined Term type might be extended to describe competences.

We have several choices to make.

Firstly do we use the educationalAlignment / AlignmentObject for this, 
or do we create a new property for  'required Competence'.

For reasons discussed when we were dealling with educationalLevel, I 
would prefer not to use the Alignment Object. We may want to discuss the 
similarity between the new property and skills 
<http://pending.schema.org/skills> ('skills required to fulfill this 
role.') from the JobPosting

Secondly, do we try to propose properties for Competency and 
CompetencyFramework types here or do we leave this for others to do and 
settle for text descriptions or URL links?

Given that Defined Term is not yet in schema, and given the work going 
on elsewhere, I am inclined to leave defining Competency and 
CompetencyFramework types to later, and to settle for text descriptions 
or links.


My inclination would be to modify the existing schema.org/skills 
property by tweaking the definition.
   skills: the skills and competences required.
and add EducationalOccupationalCredential to its expected domain.

We could also raise an issue about the desirability of a more formal 
means of representing competencies.

What do you think?

Phil

-- 

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.
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