RE: Domain sketch

Everyone’s comments have been super helpful.  Thank you for helping me understand the nuances.  And I believe Greg is right, a lot of this has to do with  semantic disconnect more than anything.  I guess this is bound to happen when you have non-technical people in the group.  Thank you for bearing with me.

Another thought I had—not sure how immediately relevant to the work at hand so we can parking lot this—is how do we deal with competencies that are self-declared by the individual?  For example, if someone wanted to organize their e-portfolio or resume and make it competency-based, but also based on a data standard, what would they be considered to be?  I understand they can pull in data from organization that awarded, instilled, or validated a competency, but if they self-declare, can that be captured as well?  Our T3 work will be taking us in this direction which is why I ask.

Jason

From: Stuart Sutton <stuartasutton@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2019 10:52 AM
To: Tyszko, Jason <jtyszko@USChamber.com>
Cc: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>; public-talent-signal@w3.org
Subject: Re: Domain sketch

Jason, yes, you describe well the status on the ground. I think the key is in phrases like your "recognize and certify 10 competencies attained".  To be of any value and to be communicated to others, these recognitions take the form of some kind of tangible, and hopefully verifiable, assertion–i.e., award of a certification, badge/open badge, micro-credential etc. For example, in my courses at the University of Washington, I could have offered badges for successful completion of various logical units of the class or even specific competencies. I would not be directly awarding competencies but rather awarding tangible recognitions of achievement (in other words, some form of (earned) credential).   So, in the end, the holder of a UW Bachelor of Science in Informatics (credential) also holds an array of more granular open badges, certifications etc (all credentials). For a non-completer of the BS in Informatics, they nevertheless walk away with an array of these more granular credentials (tangible recognitions). What you describe, Jason, is this movement toward recognition of more discrete units of achievement in all sorts of formal and informal contexts.

So, what's the big difference between an organization directly awarding competencies and awarding tangible recognition of achievement of competencies? It's quite significant in domain modeling. While an organization may instill a competency through a learning opportunity or validate its attainment in a tangible form (however attained) through some form of assessment, that organization does not directly award the competency.

Stuart

On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 5:20 AM Tyszko, Jason <jtyszko@uschamber.com<mailto:jtyszko@uschamber.com>> wrote:
Phil,

If I may, I think where Julie and I are coming from is organizations like universities and employers are trying to get in the business of directly awarding competencies.  In this way, someone could complete an assignment, course, or assessment and be recognized as having a competency without having anything to do with a credential.  For example, a company can provide a training program as part of its onboarding process and recognize and certify 10 competencies attained.  No credential may be needed to bundle them.  This is the environment we are building towards.  At the very least, the work we are pursuing here should not preclude those options in the future.  Does that help?

Jason

From: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk<mailto:phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>>
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2019 6:10 AM
To: public-talent-signal@w3.org<mailto:public-talent-signal@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Domain sketch


Thanks Julie, that is useful.

What I am struggling with is what it means to "award a competency" as opposed to "award a credential that recognizes competency".

And, yes your unpacking from my email is useful, but I would unpack further: "A student may not fulfill all the requirements for a credential but still be eligible for a credential that recognizes any competency that they have demonstrated"

There may be some difference in understanding of what a competency is, I'm trying to write something to get to the bottom of that.

Phil
On 19/08/2019 19:17, Julie Uranis wrote:
Hi everyone-
I’ve been lurking but Jason’s email inspired me to chime in. I’m +1’ing his comment, that is if his interpretation of “A credential can be offered by an EducationalOrganization but a competency cannot be” is accurate. I share his concern with this statement.

EducationalOrganization must be able to offer both credentials and competencies understanding that they can be of same class. To echo and append Jason, this is both the way the field is moving and is a reality for the millions of students that leave higher education without credentials but with competencies. Being inclusive of these conditions would fit with known use cases and student characteristics.

To pull in your last email, “Organizations can offer assessments that assess competencies, and if passed lead to the award of credentials.” I think we need to parse this a bit more. Organizations can offer assessments that assess competencies that may or may not lead to a credential – and the student may never complete the full credential, so the credential needs to be recognized as an item unto itself.

If this interpretation is wrong and my email unhelpful I’m happy to return to my lurker status.  ☺

Julie

From: Tyszko, Jason [mailto:jtyszko@USChamber.com]
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2019 2:02 PM
To: public-talent-signal@w3.org<mailto:public-talent-signal@w3.org>
Subject: RE: Domain sketch

Phil,

I’m coming in late to the conversation, and I’m probably not understanding that context, but I thought I would chime in anyway, just in case.  The statement below caught my attention:

A credential can be offered by an EducationalOrganization but a competency cannot be.
Are we suggesting that, per the way schemas are currently setup, an EducationalOrganization cannot offer competencies in lieu of credentials?  If so, that strikes me as potentially limiting and not necessarily reflective of where the field is going.

In T3 and in our other work, employers, for instance, are increasingly interested in competency-based hiring outside of credentialing.  Competencies are increasingly needed to stand alone so employer, education providers, workforce trainers, and others, can offer competencies as part of a learner or worker record.  This is also consistent with where the university registrars are going in the U.S.  From where the Chamber stands, credentials can include competencies, but competencies are not exclusively found in a credential.

Not sure if my comments add value given where the conversation was going, but in order for us to support innovations in the talent marketplace, we need a data infrastructure that makes this distinction clear.  Happy to walk this back if I’m off track.

Jason

From: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk<mailto:phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>>
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2019 1:44 PM
To: public-talent-signal@w3.org<mailto:public-talent-signal@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Domain sketch



On 19/08/2019 18:19, Nadeau, Gregory wrote:
My understanding of CTDL is that it only models Credentials as Achievement Descriptions, and does not include models for PII Assertion Records.

True, but the addition of hasCredential<https://schema.org/hasCredential> as a property of Person in schema.org<http://schema.org> is a significant change from that.
  While a relativist view could assert that the any distinction could be semantic and change in context, I continue to assert that there is a hard logical distinction between Achievement and Assertion,

True, but they can be modeled with similar terms. There is a hard logical distinction between a Person and a Book, but they both have a name. There is a logical distinction between a TextBook and a Course, but many of their properties and attributes are the same. Achievement and Assertion can be modeled as different profiles drawn from the same term set.
but not between Competency and Credential.
  While it is true that Credentials can have Competencies, they are in fact the same class of entity and often have recursive associations between them.

With the simple distinction that a credential can require a competency but a competency cannot require a credential.

A credential can be offered by an EducationalOrganization but a competency cannot be.

Outside of learner records, credentials and competencies are quite different.

Phil

In short:

Achievement Description types include Credentials, Competencies, Skills.  While historically different in some contexts, increasingly these terms are blurred and there is no logical/structural difference between them.

Achievement Assertions can refer to Achievement Descriptions and include specific PII information about the Learner and Issuer, and can include specific instance information like Evidence, Endorsement, Result, and Verification.
Greg Nadeau
Chair, IMS Global CLR
Chair, IEEE CM4LTS

From: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk><mailto:phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2019 12:59 PM
To: public-talent-signal@w3.org<mailto:public-talent-signal@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Domain sketch


I agree mostly with Alex (and Stuart's reply). I want to add some consideration of context into the mix and think about reuse of terms in different contexts (which is how schema.org<http://schema.org> works).

In short, I think the distinction between assertions and descriptions comes from putting circles around different parts of the domain sketch (different profiles of the same set of terms, if you prefer). This is part of what I mean when I say that it is not a domain model because there are different perspectives on it. I think what Alex describes is one (valid) set of perspectives.

In achievement descriptions, competency is separated from credential in most of the work that we are following (CTDL, OpenBadges BadgeClass, ESCO etc.), and it needs to be. When describing an EducationalOccupationalCredential you need to be able to say what competencies are being credentialed. That's why the competencyRequired property of EducationalOccupationalCredential got into schema.org<http://schema.org>.

It's also useful to separate competencies from credentials when describing learning resources. Then it is necessary to be able to show an alignment to a learning objective (i.e. a competence) separately from credentials, in order to promote reuse in different contexts.

But in other contexts the schema.org<http://schema.org> classes can be used as part of an assertion. I don't think anyone is doing this in schema.org<http://schema.org>, but if I were to write, as part of a JSON-LD CV (and I'm making up a couple of properties):

{

   "@id": "http://people.pjjk.net/phil#id"<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpeople.pjjk.net%2Fphil%23id&data=01%7C01%7CGNADEAU%40PCGUS.COM%7C8b30741ac8e04b5fa3fc08d724c6ac40%7Cd9b110c34c254379b97ae248938cc17b%7C0&sdata=OjN7d4yOZAz%2FEOPSM5UUJhz5lzZxgf3S0PR%2BN2woZAM%3D&reserved=0>,

   "hasCredential": {

      "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",

      "name": "PhD in Physics",

      "issuedBy": "https://www.bristol.ac.uk/"<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bristol.ac.uk%2F&data=01%7C01%7CGNADEAU%40PCGUS.COM%7C8b30741ac8e04b5fa3fc08d724c6ac40%7Cd9b110c34c254379b97ae248938cc17b%7C0&sdata=VfvNkGLhvdwwmy%2FKy26UmLyVgXOENIFX%2Bhb2RHlNgFc%3D&reserved=0>,

   },

   "hasSkill": "Educational metadata modeling"   //a literal representing a competence, could be DefinedTerm

}

then I am making achievement assertions. (And in order to make these assertions verifiable you would have to wrap them up into some collection of assertions and provide the means of verification.)

I agree with Alex that
Once you have a record that matches a person with a "competency" or "achievement description", and "evidence" or "assertion" from an "approved" organization that that person has either passed an assessment or done something that shows that... you have an "achievement assertion"

But not with
or "credential".

As Stuart says, to date in schema.org<http://schema.org> the EducationalOccupationalCredential class has been used to represent a credential offered (something that "may be awarded") in the sense of being the thing that the University of Bristol says I can sign up to if I want to study for a PhD in physics, not the specific PhD that I hold. So this is an example of a EducationalOccupationalCredential that is not an achievement assertion:

{

   "@type": "EducationalOccupationalProgram",

   "url": "http://www.bristol.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/2019/sci/phd-physics/"<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bristol.ac.uk%2Fstudy%2Fpostgraduate%2F2019%2Fsci%2Fphd-physics%2F&data=01%7C01%7CGNADEAU%40PCGUS.COM%7C8b30741ac8e04b5fa3fc08d724c6ac40%7Cd9b110c34c254379b97ae248938cc17b%7C0&sdata=FNiUXEKEslmkB0C4wUuVorWHKnGcPkcIBJWrOd3vowo%3D&reserved=0>

   "educationalCredentialAwarded": {

      "@type": "EducationalOccupationalCredential",

      "name": "PhD in Physics"

   }

}

Phil

On 19/08/2019 16:36, Alex Jackl wrote:
I agree with Greg that the distinction between the "achievement description" and the "achievement assertion" is critical, but in this case I think we are once again running aground on the semantic reefs.

If we think of an "achievement description" as a description of a Knowledge, Skill, Aptitude, or Experience (either inside of some taxonomy or not) then it matches cleanly what most people mean by competency.

It typically does not include the assessment or test that would "prove" "provide evidence" that that competency exists with some person.  That matches with what people usually refer to as an "assessment" or "evidence".

Once you have a record that matches a person with a "competency" or "achievement description", and "evidence" or "assertion" from an "approved" organization that that person has either passed an assessment or done something that shows that... you have an "achievement assertion" or "credential".

I think it is that simple.  :-)    Now - I know each of these categories have hierarchies and taxonomies and differing levels of granularity and different ways t o represent an assessment or organizations trustworthiness  or authority, but this model can be represented by what Phil is describing.

What am I missing?   I see no issue with the following semantic equivalences:
competency <-> achievement  description
assessment <-> evidence (I understand that not all evidence takes the form of a "test" but you are assessing somehow!)
credential <-> achievement assertion


***
Alexander Jackl
CEO & President, Bardic Systems, Inc.
alex@bardicsystems.com<mailto:alex@bardicsystems.com>
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On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 11:20 AM Nadeau, Gregory <gnadeau@pcgus.com<mailto:gnadeau@pcgus.com>> wrote:
Friends,

I challenge the aspect of the model that separates a competency from credential.  I believe that both credentials as expressed by CTDL and competencies as CASE (as well as badges and micro-credentials) are all overlapping labels and structures for expressing the general Achievement Description.  Degree, credential, micro-credential, badge, skill, knowledge, ability, course objective, academic standard, and learning target are all labels for this concept without accepted boundaries between them and distinctions.  The more important distinction from an information architecture standpoint is separation of the general, linked-data public Achievement Description from the Achievement Assertion that contains PII data about the Learner:

[https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/bSatpUf4dqQ3J0rWNtXXEL35xDDZHKYE6NlcobcNIo-uVYMV5yfxlyWCcjGj55e9RwdGh6sZm8XIQUT6OX-eC-9KRIU30DcRLpKYFxrrmVgG7mtrtEi5LrgOOhSMF5oZ_x8P1EX6v_k]



[cid:image002.jpg@01D55746.5F068E10]

Greg Nadeau
Manager

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From: Phil Barker <phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk<mailto:phil.barker@pjjk.co.uk>>
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2019 6:03 AM
To: public-talent-signal@w3.org<mailto:public-talent-signal@w3.org>
Subject: Domain sketch


Hello all, I got a little feedback about the domain sketch that I've shown a couple of times, and have altered it accordingly, and tried to clarify what is and isn't currently in schema.org<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fschema.org&data=01%7C01%7CGNADEAU%40PCGUS.COM%7C8b30741ac8e04b5fa3fc08d724c6ac40%7Cd9b110c34c254379b97ae248938cc17b%7C0&sdata=79ki8sv52msOXfEk%2FpXVMt%2BzPyXnmFNfn2HIF8MRiuA%3D&reserved=0>.

Here it is again. I'm thinking about putting it on the wiki, and hoping that, along with the issue list<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2Fcommunity%2Ftalent-signal%2Fwiki%2FIssues%2C_use_cases_and_requirements%23Issues_open_for_consideration&data=01%7C01%7CGNADEAU%40PCGUS.COM%7C8b30741ac8e04b5fa3fc08d724c6ac40%7Cd9b110c34c254379b97ae248938cc17b%7C0&sdata=K4ZA3A2qLVNx2nK34H15DTqyddggE5Eyh69qUbZWyzA%3D&reserved=0>, it might serve as a useful way of introducing what we are about and what we are doing.

[cid:image003.jpg@01D55746.5F068E10]

I really want to stress that it is not intended to be a complete or formal domain model, nor is it intended to be prescriptive. (I think that for a domain as big as this, with so many possible perspectives, it is premature to try to get consensus on a complete formal model now, if indeed that will ever be possible.)

I would welcome feedback on whether this sketch helps, and how it might be improved, what needs further explanation, or anything else.

Regards, Phil
--

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CETIS LLP<https://www.cetis.org.uk>: a cooperative consultancy for innovation in education technology.
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CETIS is a co-operative limited liability partnership, registered in England number OC399090
PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited company, number SC569282.
--

Phil Barker<http://people.pjjk.net/phil>. http://people.pjjk.net/phil

CETIS LLP<https://www.cetis.org.uk>: a cooperative consultancy for innovation in education technology.
PJJK Limited<https://www.pjjk.co.uk>: technology to enhance learning; information systems for education.

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