Designation: P1484.20

Sponsor: Computer Society/Learning Technology Standards Committee

Title: Standard for Information Technology - Learning Technology - Competency Definitions

Status: New Standard Project

Technical Contact: Claude Ostyn, Phone:425-637-1562, Email:claude@ostyn.com **For non-technical questions, including pricing, availability and ordering, please contact IEEE Customer Service at 1-800-678-IEEE (in U.S. and Canada); or 1-732-981-0060 (outside the U.S. and Canada); or send an email customer.service@ieee.org

History: PAR APP: Jan 30, 2000

Project scope: This standard shall specify the mandatory and optional data elements that constitute a Competency Definition as used in a Learning Management System, or referenced in a Competency Profile. The proposed approach is to use a general definition that can be semantically "tightened" or "loosened" in the data itself, while conserving the same data model regardless of how strictly a particular organization or institution requires the data to be formulated.

Project purpose: The purpose of this standard is to define a universally acceptable Competency Definition model to allow the creation, exchange and reuse of Competency Definition in applications such as Learning Management Systems, Competency or Skill Gap Analysis, Learner and other Competency profiles, etc. The standard is needed because there are currently many definitions of the terms "Learning Objective", "Competency" and "Skill", and very little agreement between how those definitions can be used to define reusable data models. This standard also addresses the following needs: a. Enable industry or domain organizations to clearly define and register competencies. b. Allow curriculum developers, trainers and managers to use a common data model to build various competency models, hierarchies and maps c. Enable providers of courses or learning objects to specify prerequisites by referencing existing competency definitions. d. Enable employers to search for and select predefined competencies rather than defining them themselves. e. Enable learners to easily search and find those competencies required by employers, schools, courses, or learning objects. f. Enable developers and managers of training, as well as managers of educational records, to develop databases of persistent, long lived Competency Definitions and certification records that can be created, exchanged among systems, and maintained. g. Enable competency definition users to deal with obsolete or superseded competency definitions in a predictable manner. h. Enable competency record keepers or users to identify the source of the Competency Definition, validation information, and other meta information useful to locate an objective in a repository or collection. i. Enable users of the Learning Objects Metadata Standard developed by a parallel group to integrate competency definition references in Learning Object Metadata.

PAR extracted from http://standards.ieee.org/ on 2 October 2003.