Competencies development and enhancement in ELTEC

COMPETENCIES DEVELOPMENT
AND ENHANCEMENT IN ELTEC
Olga DANYLOVA *
D. MARTYNOV **
Kateryna SYNYTSYA ***
This paper describes competency-based learning content development approach and
key models for individual competency improvement and management using English Language
Training Enhancement Course (ELTEC) as an example. The main goal of the ELTEC is
competence and confidence building for participation in meetings, which is achieved by
providing learning content based on authentic communication situations and support of
authentic learning and professional activities. As a learning content development system
«Objects Orchestrator» tool was used. Its functionality supports individual competency
management according to different professional tasks and situations.
Keywords
Competency model, learning object, metadata, authoring support
Introduction
Information society sets up new challenges to its members requiring their
permanent professional, social and personal growth and perfection to feel
adequate with the changing world. Emerging technologies, services and
products require not only higher educational level of the individuals, but also
their professional mobility, ability to expand their competencies to the
neighboring fields, set up goals and make decisions related to their professional
development and individual learning, and demonstrate other life-long learning
skills.
Nowadays many companies are reconsidering their attitude to education
and training, and change priorities for their HR departments. Investments in staff
training and education are treated the same way as research spending.
Traditional approach to staff training based on face-to-face seminars does not
correspond any more to the needs of quickly developing companies, growing
training expenses and lack of qualified personnel to fill positions, thus new
models of distributed training are required. It is especially important in case of
large international enterprises with numerous agencies around the world.
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Distance learning programs partly address these needs. However, they are
mostly designed as pre-defined sequences of training modules, not able to adapt
to individual knowledge, skills or professional experience of a learner. Whereas
beginners may benefit from such programs, those that have specific needs due to
change of professional duties or appearance of new products or services they
need to master, require a new type of environment for professional growth
support.
This paper describes an approach to learning content development based
on the professional competency model.
Four-facets competency model
One reason for the increasing importance of competency concept in
learning and training is rapid technological development in society. An
additional reason is that today’s organizations are doing more knowledge and
service work [6].
We consider competency as a core concept that determines training needs.
The following basic definition is used.
Competency - a specific, identifiable, definable, and measurable
knowledge, skill, ability and/or other deployment-related characteristic (e.g.
attitude, behavior, physical ability) which a human resource may possess and
which is necessary for, or material to, the performance of an activity within a
specific business context [2].
We suggest the following four-facet competency model for efficient
control of competency growth:
1. Structure facet. This facet defines competency structure, its relations to
other competencies and thus location within the competency map. We identify
elementary (further non-divisible) competencies and complex competencies
which may be described via other (more simple) competencies.
2. Mastery facet. This facet reflects a set of possible mastery levels for a
certain set of competencies, such as beginner, advanced, professional etc. Thus
it is possible to model quantitative and qualitative growth of proficiency in some
field in case that competency models for beginner and expert are different.
3. KAS facet. Competency may belong to various domains (categories)
cognitive, affective, and psychomotor [1]. Cognitive competency is related to
the mental skills (Knowledge), affective describes growth in feelings or
emotional areas (Attitude), while psychomotor is for manual or physical skills
(Skills). According to KAS (Knowledge, Attitude, Skills) model, after
competency training (learning) the learner possesses new skills, knowledge, or
attitudes.
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Cognitive domain involves knowledge and development of intellectual
skills. This includes the recall or recognition of specific facts, procedural
patterns, and concepts that serve in the development of intellectual abilities and
skills. There are six major categories – Knowledge, Comprehension,
Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. Affective domain includes the
manner in which we deal with things emotionally, such as feelings, values,
appreciation, enthusiasms, motivations, and attitudes. The psychomotor domain
includes physical movement, coordination, and use of the motor-skill areas:
Perception, Readiness to act, Guided response, Mechanism, Complex Overt
Response, Adaptation.
4. Last facet reflects competency life cycle. In quickly developing fields,
such as information technology (IT), approaches, technologies and products are
continuously updated, which means that competency obtained several years ago
may be no longer relevant. To reflect aging of obtained knowledge and skills,
we suggest a measure of competency half-decay, i.e. time period within which
professional competency of the educational body graduate is diminished in half
because of the changes in the field. For IT specialists, this period is identified as
4-5 years. Competency life cycle variable reflects aging of the competency, its
relevance to current state of the art and further life potential, which facilitates
rating of competencies from the same class.
Thus generalized competency model may be represented as:
M C {Structure, Mastery, KAS, Urgency}.
Due to demand of interoperability among learning systems that deal with
competency information (human resource systems, learning content,
competency or skills repositories) model elements description of competencies
is supported by the IMS specification [5]. Such approach allows for expression
of Mastery, KAS and Urgency facets.
Object Orchestrator
To support competency-based authoring, an OO (Object Orchestrator)
tool [3] was chosen. Started as a simple open-source system for course
development support, it was enhanced significantly to become now a core for a
learning content management framework. Two key functionalities for resource
development are supported in the OO: construction of the learning objects
(learning object builder) and their description (metadata editor). As shown in
Fig.1, metadata editor is a powerful tool which supports standard metadata
schema for object description but also allows an author to change the schema,
extending it to reflect specific features necessary for search and selection of the
objects.
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Figure 1: Metadata editor in OO
OO objects, both elementary and complex, may be supplied with
metadata created according to LOM, DC [4], or some proprietary schema.
However, up to now authors hesitated to describe the objects and the use of
metadata was limited to automatic filling in some fields. LOM metadata fields
provide sufficient information to register an object in the repository, however,
they are not specific enough to search and evaluate similar objects within a
collection [7]. It is clear that depending on the object type and purpose of its
reuse additional features should be included into the description schema.
Due to extensibility of the metadata schema in the OO, competency
description scheme based on competency model is completely supported by the
OO metadata editor (as shown in Fig. 2).
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Figure 2: Competency description scheme in OO
Competency-oriented object-based authoring ensures consistent
visualization for different information types, thus facilitating understanding and
memorization of the presented information. Thus, a body of a competency-based
course provides a framework and guidance for knowledge and skills acquisition.
Any supplementary material may be provided as electronic documents or web
references. Objects for the course may be created from the templates or taken
from the collection of already developed objects. Thus, some fragments of the
learning content from traditional curriculum-based learning courses may be
reused in the competency-based course.
ELTEC development
The choice of language course to prove the validity and importance of
competency-based training was driven by the following. Language learning in
educational organization, from school to University, is intended to develop
capabilities and provide basic knowledge and skills to communicate. However,
it is not intended for training to apply acquired skills in specific professional
communication situations. Moreover, lack of practice leads to forgetting
vocabulary necessary for a “real-time” communication, thus professional
communication in English becomes an important competency for many fields.
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Most learners of English will have to participate in meetings of one type
or another. They may have to meet visitors, organize events, discuss work with
their colleagues, or attend large international conferences. In any of these cases,
their ability to respond quickly and naturally to new ideas will be critical. They
will feel the pressure to seize the moment to get their ideas across. Competence
and confidence to participate fully in meetings will come when they are
equipped with a range of skills and language that help them to anticipate and
handle effectively many of the difficulties they will face.
The main goal of ELTEC is to facilitate competence and confidence
building to enable active participation in various kinds of meetings, by providing
learning content based on authentic communication situations and authentic
activities support.
The ELTEC is a practical course specifically designed to develop
essential communication and language skills. ELTEC content is arranged around
the key meeting-related communication competencies (Fig. 3) that are supported
by the 6 modules, which deal with the main stages of meetings, from preparation
through directing and facilitating to decision-making and closing a meeting.
Meeting
Manager
English IKT Manager
Grammar Vocabulary Speaking Internet M Word Agenda
Figure 3: “Meeting Manager” ELTEC competency structure
Each module adds on language capability and includes authentic
examples and situations with measurable result at the end. Communication
practice is presented with interactive multimedia components.
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The ELTEC competence-based structure facilitates its use for on-the-job
and just-in-time training and enables a learner to focus on competencies
necessary for current situation and current task.
Conclusions
In this paper, we propose individual learning management approach for
helping individuals to get new or update current competencies in some
professional field. We focus on the competency-based training individualization
and competency management aspects. Our approach is based on the four-facets
competency model which includes competency structure facet, mastery facet,
Knowledge- Attitude- Skills facet and facet reflecting competency life cycle.
The proposed competency model supports training process oriented on the
personal characteristics and required mastery, cognitive, affective, psychomotor
levels. Competency life cycle variable reflects aging of the competency and may
be used for competency actual status monitoring and updating. OO tool was
used to create competency-based learning content for the ELTEC which is still
under development.
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References:
[1].Bloom Bengamin S, Mesia Bertram B., Krathwohl David R. (1964). Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives (two vols: The Affective Domain & The Cognitive Domain),
New York.
[2].Competencies (Measurable Characteristics) Recommendation (2003), Editor:
Chuck Allen, [xml.coverpages.org/HR-XML-Competencies-1_0.pdf]
[3].Danylova O., Podgornov A., Synytsya K., and Stepanenko Yu. Object-oriented
technology for learning courses creation «Objects Orchestrator». In Proceedings of the
International conference «Theory and applications in software design»
(TAAPSD’2005). (Kiev, Ukraine, 7-9 Dec. 2005) UKMA Press, Kiev, 2005, 106-109.
[4].IEEE Std 1484.12.1-2002. IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata, 2002.
[5].IMS Reusable Definition of Competency or Educational Objective - Information
Model (2002), [http://www.imsglobal.org/competencies/rdceov1p0/imsrdceo_infov1p0.html]
[6].Lindgren R., Competence Systems, Gothenburg Studies in Informatics (June
2002), Report 23, ISSN 1400-741X.
[7].Synytsya K. Towards Support of Object-Based Learning Content Authoring,
ICICIS’07, March 15–18, 2007 (Cairo, Egypt), pp. 482-486.
[8].Wiley, D. A. (2000). Learning object design and sequencing theory. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Brigham Young University.
*
Researcher, International Research and Training Centre,Ukraine
** Researcher , International Research and Training Centre,Ukraine
*** PhD , International Research and Training Centre,Ukraine
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