TENCompetence

TENCompetence Track - EduMedia 2008

2008-07-02T11:48:49+01:00

Click here to access the published proceedings for this event. As well as playing host to a festival of football this summer, the picturesque city of Salzburg provided the setting for this year's EduMedia conference. Over the last few years the Edumedia conference has successfully attracted researchers and practitioners from mostly German speaking countries. With a special focus on self-organised learners in the interactive web, this year’s conference included a TENCompetence strand included presentations on advanced learning technologies and the ways in which they can be used to support self-organized learners. The TENCompetence track consisted of 3-5 time slots with 2-3 presentations per slot. The track focused on the question of which tools, methods, frameworks and architectures are best suited to support self-organized learners in their competence development process. The event was geared towards the interests of educational technologists, scientists, elearning trainers & teachers. Selected contributions from the track will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the Journal of Educational Technology & Society published in late 2008/early 2009. Click here to access the published proceedings for this event.

4th Competence Open Workshop in Madrid

2008-04-30T13:18:45+01:00

Despite the uncharacteristically wet weather, Spain's capital provided an impressively stylish backdrop for the 4th TENCompetence Open workshop. The presentations are available here Organised by ALTRAN SDB in conjunction with the University of Amsterdam (UVA), the workshop spanned two whole days. Seventeen papers were earmarked for presentation, fourteen of which were accepted for publication in the proceedings. Introductions from organizers Miguel Arjona(ALTRAN SDB), Henk Sligte (UvA) and project leader Rob Koper were followed by a presentation from Rob in the form of an interactive competence development scenario designed to demonstrate the purpose and functionality of the Personal Competence Manager. The session highlighted the obstacles faced by an individual wishing to develop competence in a specific domain and focused on the solutions offered by TENCompetence. The main body of the proceedings comprised paper presentations relating to a number of themes including:

Pilots and Practices
The integrated architecture
Group Interaction and Group Learning
Assessment

The agenda and presentations from the workshop can be found here.

Winterschool 2008

2008-03-05T09:11:30+00:00

On 18-22 February 2008 the second TENCompetence Winter School took place in Innsbruck. 15 lecturers and 35 attendees from a variety of backgrounds and countries (not only PhD students and not only from Europe) created a stimulating and exciting learning environment.The presentations are available here. The main theme was Personal Competence Management, which forms the focus of the TENCompetence project. In keeping with this theme, a number of different project outcomes were presented, including the Personal Competence Management system itself. Although most of the Winterschool lecturers were active partners in the project, a number of external lecturers presented some alternative perspectives: Ambjörn Naeve from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden introduced the LUISA approach (Learning content management system UsingInnovative Semantic web services Architecture) whilst Ronald Maier of the University of Innsbruck explained the objectives of the new MATURE project. Ken Currie of CAPDM presented a corporate application based on the way to interpret, design and implement a functional Competency Framework, and Ralf Klamma of Aachen University brought a Web 2.0 perspective onto the concept of competence development. One of the highlights of the Winterschool was a simulation game run by Albert Angehrn and Katrina Maxwell of TENCompetence partner INSEAD. In the closing stages of the event, Scott Wilson of the University of Bolton looked at the current state of the art in digital identity management. Participants took the opportunity to organize their own sessions and discuss their experience using social software in learning as well as interoperability issues. For those left standing at the end of the day, there were several informal evening discussions with Ambjörn Naeve and Ton van der Moolen. Sport and leisure activities on Wednesday afternoon offered a chance for attendees to develop a special range of competences in snowboarding, skiing, and sledging! The whole week is well documented by the collection of more than 1000 photos taken by the participants themselves at http://flickr.com/photos/tags/winterschool2008/ The presentations are available here.

TENCompetence Open Workshop - Madrid April 10,11th 2008

2007-12-14T07:39:04+00:00

TENCompetence Open Workshop 2008 TENCompetence Open Workshop: Empowering Learners for Lifelong Competence Development: pedagogical, organisational and technological issues Location: Madrid, Espana Venue: Hotel Santo Domingo, Madrid Start: April 10, 2008, 09:00 hrs End: April 11, 2008, 17:00 hrs Introduction This workshop is organised by the EU 6th Framework Integrated Project TENCompetence. The objective of the workshop is to identify and analyse current research and technologies in the fields that provide design guidelines and evidence for powerful interfaces, interaction and navigation support, and tailor-made competence development opportunities for individual learners, teams and organisations. These actors and organisations (will) use open source infrastructures that contain all the services to (further) develop their competences, using all the distributed knowledge resources (including actors), learning activities, units of learning and learning routes/ programmes that are available online. Theme The main theme of this workshop is to provide an overview on current research on support and empowerment of learners in relation to their competence development. The theme includes, but is not limited to support for learners in: · managing and creating competence profiles and e-portfolios · becoming aware of their competences and establishing their position within a learning network, compared to peers and resources · finding adequate resources, both material resources and peers · knowledge management · creating their own learning paths · monitoring of their competence development progress · giving and receiving help from tutors and peers Research may be performed at all levels of implementation and includes: · conceptual models, both pedagogical and/or organisational · learning designs · software, varying from software agents to whole infrastructures, explicitly including open source systems Also, all stages of the research cycle are welcomed, including: · validation and evaluation of existing systems and models · development of new systems and models · reviews of literature, meta-analyses and descriptions of state-of-the art Topics Topics relevant to the workshop include, but are not limited to: · Personal data, profiles, and portable ePortfolios for competence registration · Competence description frameworks for professions · Learner positioning · Technologies for the discovery of suitable learning resources · Collaborative filtering technologies, recommend or systems for learning · Authoring, discovery, advise and/or exchange of knowledge resources, learning activities or units of learning · Knowledge Management issues related to competence development, lifelong learning or HRM · Research and technology development to support users in creating adequate learning designs (e.g. software agents or design aids) · Navigational support to users in a learning network · Personalised and collaborative trails using knowledge resources or learning activities · Research and technology development of pedagogical and organisational models and scenarios for competence development, and their validation · Competence assessment, including self-assessment · Monitoring (changes in) competences in professions · Social software usable for lifelong competence development · Dynamic discovery of, and collaboration between, informal learning groups · New social theories and practices which have implications for Competence Development · Methods and tools to support learners in distributed environments, peer tutoring, teaching, mentoring, coaching · Learning Design for formal and informal Lifelong Learning and Competence Development · Mobile support for lifelong competence development · Semantic Web and lifelong competence development · Use of language technologies to support learning processes · Models and tools supporting work-based learning · Open standards and specifications usable for learning networks · Gender issues related to competence development and competence management · Evaluations of existing systems and open source infrastructures · Studies defining the current state-of-the-art in learning systems and open source infrastructures for lifelong competence development · Advanced instruments and technologies for the evaluation of competence development management (gaming, collaborative learning, competence development, ePortfolios) Workshop LanguageEnglish Publication of Proceedings All papers accepted for the workshop will be published in the official ISBN workshop proceedings and will be distributed to the participants after the workshop via Ten Competence’s dSpace. Selected papers will be invited to submit a full paper (4000 words) for a special issue of the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning devoted to the outcomes of the workshop. Workshop Chair ROB KOPER [OPEN UNIVERSITY - NL] HENK SLIGTE [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM - NL]MEMBERS

WILFRIED ADMIRAAL [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM - NL]
JOSEP BLAT [UNIVERSITY POMPEU FABRE - ES]
JACQUELINE BOURDEAU [LICEF RESEARCH CENTER-TELE-UNIVERSITY - CA]
CHRISTOPHE CHOQUET [L'UNIVERSITÉ DU MAINE - FR]
NOOR CHRISTOPH [ELSEVIER - NL]
MAARTJE VAN DAALEN [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM - NL]
DAI GRIFFITHS [UNIVERSITY OF BOLTON - UK]
HENRY HERMANS [OPEN UNIVERSITY - NL]
JOSÉ JANSSEN [OPEN UNIVERSITY - NL]
OLEG LIBER [UNIVERSITY OF BOLTON - UK]
JOOST MEIJER [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM - NL]
AGATHE MERCERON [UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES BERLIN - DE]
WOLFGANG NEJDL [L3S RESEARCH CENTER - DE]
GRIFF RICHARDS [SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY - CA]
JUDITH SCHOONENBOOM [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM - NL]
NADIRA SAAB [UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN - NL]
PATRICK SINS [UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT - NL]
PETER SLOEP [OPEN UNIVERSITY - NL]

Local organising Committee contact details ALTRAN SDB Parque Empresarial las Mercedes Av Aragón 330, Edificio 1 (entrance Calle Campezo 1) 28022 Madrid Contact persons: Laura Penelas [ laura@altransdb.com] Miguel Arjona [ marjona@altransdb.com] Tel: +(34) 91.744.46.00 Fax: +(34) 91.415.24.57 Registration The registration form (see below) may be downloaded at: http://www.tencompetence.org/files/madrid/reg_madrid.doc Please complete it and send it as an email attachment to: henk.sligte@uva.nl Henk Sligte, SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut for Educational Research, Amsterdam. The Netherlands Deadline for registration: March 8, 2008 Fees € 80 The fee covers conference attendance, materials, lunches, refreshments over the two days. Conference dinner April 10, 2008; separate subscription necessary. Price €40 Location The main conference venue will be at Hotel Santo Domingo Madrid (http://www.hotelsantodomingo.com/) Plaza de Santo Domingo, 13 28013 Madrid (Spain) Phone: +34 91 547 98 00 Fax: +34 91 547 59 95Email: reserva@hotelsantodomingo.com Accommodation A number of rooms have been pre-reserved at a rate of €115 per night (tax not included: 7%). Do not hesitate to check the Web for better deals, or for other places to stay. More details on the event including the call for papers can be found at: http://www.tencompetence.org/node/145Additional details on the event will be made available here in due course.

Call for Papers (Extended to February 29)- TENCompetence Open Workshop - Madrid 2008

2007-12-14T06:24:45+00:00

TENCompetence Open Workshop 2008 Deadline for contributions extended to February 29 TENCompetence Open Workshop: Empowering Learners for Lifelong Competence Development: pedagogical, organisational and technological issues Location: Madrid, Espana Venue: Hotel Santo Domingo, Madrid Start: April 10, 2008, 09:00 hrs End: April 11, 2008, 17:00 hrs Introduction This workshop is organised by the EU 6th Framework Integrated Project TENCompetence. The objective of the workshop is to identify and analyse current research and technologies in the fields that provide design guidelines and evidence for powerful interfaces, interaction and navigation support, and tailor-made competence development opportunities for individual learners, teams and organisations. These actors and organisations (will) use open source infrastructures that contain all the services to (further) develop their competences, using all the distributed knowledge resources (including actors), learning activities, units of learning and learning routes/ programmes that are available online. Theme The main theme of this workshop is to provide an overview on current research on support and empowerment of learners in relation to their competence development. The theme includes, but is not limited to support for learners in: · managing and creating competence profiles and e-portfolios · becoming aware of their competences and establishing their position within a learning network, compared to peers and resources · finding adequate resources, both material resources and peers · knowledge management · creating their own learning paths · monitoring of their competence development progress · giving and receiving help from tutors and peers Research may be performed at all levels of implementation and includes: · conceptual models, both pedagogical and/or organisational · learning designs · software, varying from software agents to whole infrastructures, explicitly including open source systems Also, all stages of the research cycle are welcomed, including: · validation and evaluation of existing systems and models · development of new systems and models · reviews of literature, meta-analyses and descriptions of state-of-the art Topics Topics relevant to the workshop include, but are not limited to: · Personal data, profiles, and portable ePortfolios for competence registration · Competence description frameworks for professions · Learner positioning · Technologies for the discovery of suitable learning resources · Collaborative filtering technologies, recommend or systems for learning · Authoring, discovery, advise and/or exchange of knowledge resources, learning activities or units of learning · Knowledge Management issues related to competence development, lifelong learning or HRM · Research and technology development to support users in creating adequate learning designs (e.g. software agents or design aids) · Navigational support to users in a learning network · Personalised and collaborative trails using knowledge resources or learning activities · Research and technology development of pedagogical and organisational models and scenarios for competence development, and their validation · Competence assessment, including self-assessment · Monitoring (changes in) competences in professions · Social software usable for lifelong competence development · Dynamic discovery of, and collaboration between, informal learning groups · New social theories and practices which have implications for Competence Development · Methods and tools to support learners in distributed environments, peer tutoring, teaching, mentoring, coaching · Learning Design for formal and informal Lifelong Learning and Competence Development · Mobile support for lifelong competence development · Semantic Web and lifelong competence development · Use of language technologies to support learning processes · Models and tools supporting work-based learning · Open standards and specifications usable for learning networks · Gender issues related to competence development and competence management · Evaluations of existing systems and open source infrastructures · Studies defining the current state-of-the-art in learning systems and open source infrastructures for lifelong competence development · Advanced instruments and technologies for the evaluation of competence development management (gaming, collaborative learning, competence development, ePortfolios) Workshop LanguageEnglish Publication of Proceedings All papers accepted for the workshop will be published in the official ISBN workshop proceedings and will be distributed to the participants after the workshop via Ten Competence’s dSpace. Selected papers will be invited to submit a full paper (4000 words) for a special issue of the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning devoted to the outcomes of the workshop. Workshop Chair Rob Koper (Netherlands) Co- Chair Henk Sligte (Netherlands) Co-chair Miguel Arjona (Spain) Programme Committee:Judith Schoonenboom, Netherlands Barry Harper, Australia Joachim Hasebrook, Germany Roger Hartley, UK Wolfgang Nejdl, Germany Roumen Nikolov, Bulgaria Mike Spector, USA Peter Goodyear, Australia Terry Anderson, Canada Albert Angehrn, France John Erpenbeck, Germany Kinshuk, New Zealand Oleg Liber, UK David Merrill, USA Gilbert Pacquette, Canada Griff Richards, Canada Bernard Scott, UK Demetrios Sampson, Greece David Wiley, USA Local organising Committee contact details ALTRAN SDB Parque Empresarial las Mercedes Av Aragón 330, Edificio 1 (entrance Calle Campezo 1) 28022 Madrid Contact persons: Laura Penelas [ laura@altransdb.com] Miguel Arjona [ marjona@altransdb.com] Tel: +(34) 91.744.46.00 Fax: +(34) 91.415.24.57 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Deadline for paper submissions February 15, 2008 During the workshop it will be possible to present a paper of 2000 words. These submissions may include Research, Technology Development, Review and Application but are not limited to these only. Furthermore, participants can submit a proposal for a demonstration session to demonstrate relevant software. Electronic submissions should be forwarded as a Portable Document Format (.pdf) attachment to: henk.sligte@uva.nl All submissions must be papers of 2000 words and formatted according to the publication guidelines published at: http://ld06.uni-sofia.bg/CFP_Instructions%20for%20Authors.pdf All authors will be informed of the results of the review process and whether or not their papers were accepted for the publication in the workshop proceedings by February 29, 2008 at the latest. Full papers Invitation to submit full papers by April 18, 2008 at the latest (less than 50% of total number of submitted papers). Full papers will be reviewed by members of the programme committee. Accepted full papers are due in formatted form by May 9 at the latest. Papers will be published in the June 2008 issue of International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET). Registration The registration form (see below) may be downloaded at: http://www.tencompetence.org/files/madrid/reg_madrid.doc Please complete it and send it as an email attachment to: henk.sligte@uva.nl Henk Sligte, SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut for Educational Research, Amsterdam. The Netherlands Deadline for registration: March 8, 2008 Fees € 80 The fee covers conference attendance, materials, lunches, refreshments over the two days. Conference dinner April 10, 2008; separate subscription necessary. Price €40 Location The main conference venue will be at Hotel Santo Domingo Madrid (http://www.hotelsantodomingo.com/) Plaza de Santo Domingo, 13 28013 Madrid (Spain) Phone: +34 91 547 98 00 Fax: +34 91 547 59 95Email: reserva@hotelsantodomingo.com Accommodation A number of rooms have been pre-reserved at a rate of €115 per night (tax not included: 7%). Do not hesitate to check the Web for better deals, or for other places to stay.

Building the European Network for Lifelong Competence Development....in Bulgaria.

2007-11-12T14:32:40+00:00

The central need addressed by TENCompetence is to provide ubiquitous and lifelong adapted access to facilities that support the creation, storage, use and exchange of formal and informal knowledge and learning resources. These issues were addressed as part of a workshop at the EUROPEAN DAY OF THE ENTREPRENEUR, on October 25 - 26, 2007. T he European Day of the Entrepreneur /EDE/, traditionally organized by Sofia Municipality and Sofia University "St.Kliment Ohridski" was held for the fifth time on 25 - 26 of October 2007 at the Inter Expo Center, Sofia. All the relevant Ministries and more than 20 important public, non-governmental and private structures helped to organise this forum. This year the European day of the Entrepreneur was held under the motto "INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP". The event provided a unique environment for catalyzing both quality entrepreneurship and new business growth development. Five presentations in all were presented during the workshop. More than 85 participants visited the workshop. For more information, see: http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/ede2007/10c_en.htm Presentations and video from the workshop are available here: http://www-it.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/ede2007/ppt_en.htm

Lifelong learning networks - e-Portfolio 2007

2007-11-05T15:42:28+00:00

Under the theme “Employability and Lifelong learning in the knowledge society” this year’s ePortfolio conference took place over three days (October 17th-19th) at the Maastricht Exhibition and Conference Centre (MECC) in the Netherlands. The event was co-organised by TENCompetence and Eifel as well as a number of other organisations including: SURF, CWI, Kennisnet, Kenteq, the City of Maastricht and the Province of Limburg. Whilst the TENCompetence project does not focus exclusively on e-Portfolios, they (ePortfolios) are included as one of seven major usage profiles that currently define the intended functionality of the infrastructure. In the context of the project, the portfolio is intended to help users reflect on their accomplishments and to help publish the profile to relevant communities. In addition to issues relating to portfolios, the scope of the conference covered a wide range of subject areas including three sessions devoted to the TENCompetence related theme of “Lifelong learning Networks”. The majority of the TENCompetence contributions were made by members of project staff based at the Open University of the Netherlands under the respective sub-headings of:

Context and content
The role of learner profiling
Personalised peer support

Context and content The first of these sessions comprised three separate presentations beginning with an analysis of the functionality of social web applications (del.icio.us, Flickr and YouTube) by Berlanga et al.[1]. The presentation looked at ways in which such functions could be used to encourage better management, organisation and regulating of Learning Networks among participants, a subject which is increasingly pertinent to the project as functionalty and services continue to be added to the developing infrastructure. The need to establish consistent and meaningful descriptions of learning paths has arisen in response to plans to enable comparisons and exchange of differnt types of learning action (course, programme etc.) in the context of flexible lifelong learning. In their paper “Towards a learning path specification”, Jansen et al.[2] identify the requirements for a learning path specification and map them on two existing specifications designed to describe learning programmes, XCRI and IMS-LD. They went on to identify the main elements of the learning path specification. In the third and final presentation included under the umbrella of “Context and Content”, Sodhi et al. [3] consider alternatives to current approaches employed in today’s IMS LD authoring tools with a view to enabling non-experts to better design e-learning courses, activities etc. The integration of IMS LD into the TENCompetence infrastructure currently forms the focus of research within the project. The role of learner profiling "Processing learner profiles for smart indicators" by Glahn et al. [4] is the first of two papers dealing with the issue of learner profiling. As e-learning systems develop so do the possibilities they afford and the complexities these entail with the result that the need to help learners navigate through complex learning environments is growing in importance. The TENCompetence project recognises this need and addresses the problem through work on smart system indicators which are intended to provide contextual information relevant to the performance of learning tasks. In the second of the learner profiling presentations Brouns et al. [5] takes a look at the role personal profiling and context portfolio information are expected to play the TENCompetence infrastructure. This paper addresses the issues implicit in helping to meet a person’s learning needs through social interaction with peers in learning communities. Personalised Peer Support "Question-answering through Selecting and Connecting Peer-students" by Van Rosmalen et al.[6] invokes a model earmarked for integration in the TENCompetence infrastructure. The model is designed to help students obtain answers to questions which tutors don’t have the time to answer. This student based solution draws on the knowledge and skills of peers who are briefly brought together for the purpose of a question and answer exchange. In their case study on "Enabling flexible recognition of prior learning competences using the EVC-toolbox electronic support system". Bitter-Rijpkema et al.[7] present their vision for the design of the EVC box, a tool designed to enable e-guidance in the portfolio building process for all actors involved in the Assessment of Prior Learning, a process which is fundamental to any competence development system. In the final presentation relating to Personalised Peer Support, Berlanga et al. [8] look "Towards a Model for Navigation Support in Learning Networks." In this paper, the authors present work in progress in the form of simulations intended to reveal the characteristics needed for more efficient and effective individualized support in completing learning activities in a Learning Network. The TENCompetence project made a number of further contributions in the form of of a three day exhibition featuring a running demo of the Personal Competence Manager (PCM). The exhibition was complimented by a presentation on the PCM run jointly by project leader Rob Koper (OUNL) and Chris Kew (University of Bolton) which presented the aims of the TENCompetence infrastructure and an overview of its functionality and services via an explanation of the TENCompetence domain model and a subsequent walk-through of the client software. Watch this space for links to the conference proceedings. Below you can find links to the TENCompetence papers and presentations at the e_Potfolio conference. [1] Berlanga, A., Sloep, P., Brouns, F., Van Rosmalen, P., Bitter-Rijpkema, M., Koper, R. (2007) Functionality for Learning Networks: Lessons Learned from Social Web Applications. [2] Janssen, J., Berlange, A., Vogten, H., Koper., R (2007) Towards a learning path specification [3] Sodhi,T., Brouns,F., Miao,Y., Koper, R. (2007) Supporting the non-expert in the authoring of personalized learning using IMS LD [4] Glahn, C., Specht, M., Koper,R. (2007) Processing learner profiles for smart indicator [5] Brouns, F., Bitter-Rijpkema. M.E., Sloep, P.B., Kester, L., van Rosmalen, P., Berlanga, A., Koper, R. (2007) Profiling mechanisms to stimulate participation in learning networks [6] Van Rosmalen, P; Brouns, F; Sloep, P; Kester, L., Berlanga, A; Bitter, M; Koper, R. (2007) Question-answering through Selecting and Connecting Peer-students [7] Bitter-Rijpkema, M., Wolters M., Rutjens, M., Van der Sanden., P. (2007) Enabling flexible recognition of prior learning competences using the EVC-toolbox electronic support system" [8] Berlanga, A., Van den Berg, B., Nadolski,R., Drachsler, H., Hummel, H.G.K., Koper, R. (2007) Towards a Model for Navigation Support in Learning Networks.

Winterschool 2008 - Call for Participation

2007-10-18T12:49:12+01:00

TENCompetence Winter School 2008Registration now closedClick here to access the programme OBJECTIVES: The TENCompetence Winter School is considered as an intense training and collaboration on the core topics related to the TENCompetence project (http://www.tencompetence.org), building the European Network for lifelong competence development. The first Winter School (http://www.tencompetence.org/node/116) received positive feedback from the attendees. The main theme of the second event will be Personal Competence Management. The programme includes lectures and hands-on sessions from leading experts in the field. We want to offer enough space for interactive sessions, informal discussions, group work, and students’ presentations. Our ambition is to stimulate emergence of communities of practice and learning networks as well as to support joint research opportunities. PhD students and other interested people from the PRO-LC Cluster as well as from outside are invited to participate and become part of the TENCompetence research community. TOPICS:

Personal Competence Development

Web 2.0 Style Competence Development in Communities of Practice

Increasing Global Organizational Competence

Knowledge Management & Organizational Learning

Simulation & Game Based Learning

Digital Identity Management

Personalization in E-learning

Knowledge Representation & Authoring in Adaptive Education

Specification & Use of Policies

Instructional Design

Sales Process Application of Competence Frameworks

Evaluating Personal Competence Management

Evaluation of Knowledge Management Systems

Personal Competence Manager (PCM)

Integrating Your Software with the PCM Services

LECTURERS:

Albert Angehrn, INSEAD, France
Chris Kew, University of Bolton, United Kingdom
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen,Germany
Rob Koper, Open University, the Netherlands
Milos Kravcik, Open University, the Netherlands
Ruud Lemmers, LogicaCMG, the Netherlands
Ronald Maier, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Linda Napoletano, Giunti Labs, Italy
Ambjörn Naeve, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden Daniel Olmedilla, L3S, Germany
Judith Schoonenboom, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Henk Sligte, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Martin Smith, CAPDM, the United Kingdom.
Marcus Specht, Open University, the Netherlands
Scott Wilson, University of Bolton, United Kingdom
Iwan Wopereis, Open University, the Netherlands

ORGANISATION:

Milos Kravcik, Open University, the Netherlands
Christian Glahn, Open University, the Netherlands
Marcus Specht, Open University, the Netherlands Wolfgang Greller, Open University, the Netherlands
Mieke Haemers, Open University, the Netherlands

VENUE: The winter school will take place nearby Innsbruck, an internationally renowned winter sport centre in western Austria. The participants will stay in the Tiroler Bildungsinstitut - Grillhof: http://www.tirol.gv.at/themen/bildung/einrichtungen/grillhof COST: EUR 500 (including accommodation and meals, excluding traveling expenses). We especially encourage the project partners of the PRO-LC Cluster (http://www.professional-learning-cluster.org) to enable their members to attend the event and support exchange of knowledge among these closely related projects in this way. TENCompetence is not allowed to provide any grants to external students. APPLICATIONS: The winter school is intended for PhD students and other researchers investigating the issues related to lifelong competence development and technology enhanced learning. People are invited to submit applications to milos.kravcik at ou.nl.The application should include a Curriculum Vitae and an abstract describing the research objective. The deadline for submissions is November 30th, 2007. The school will be limited to 40 participants.

Services and Business models for TENCompetence - Call for SME participation

2007-10-17T18:31:16+01:00

Background information TENCompetence is building an infrastructure for use by anyone in the field of lifelong competence development. To secure the interoperability of the technical infrastructure, an architecture based on open standards is being developed. To secure future development and deployment all software, technical documentation, business models, training manuals, etc. produced from project funds are made available to the public as soon as they have passed the required quality assessment procedures. TENCompetence is constantly seeking to extend and sustain its objectives by inviting associate partners to join in its activities. This call for proposals is an invitation to SME’s to join and participate as associate partners in this process. Depending on the scope and quality of the proposal, allowances from 2.500 up to 25,000 euros are available. Three types of activity are eligible for funding:

Participation in, and contribution to, events organized by TENCompetence, for which travel and acommodation costs can be claimed in line with Consortium practice (economy class, budget hotels);
Development or adaptation of (an) existing service(s) to extend the use and application of of the TENCompetence services - including both ‘software services’ and customer services;
Design and development of a business model to supply one or more TENCompetence services.

For the first activity type eligibility will be judged on the basis of notification of the applicant’s intended participation in an event as well as the results expected to be obtained in attending. In the last two activity types, proposals should describe in detail how applicants will derive empirical evidence of (for 2) the added value of the new service, or (for 3) the applicability and sustainability of the proposed business model. This is preferably done by means of a demonstrator. The demonstrator may be organized within your own organization; together with external organizations; or with a group of professionals centered around a topic; within your locality, or at a national or international level. How to applyApplication is open until 1-12-2008 or until the budget is exhausted. Successful candidates will be linked to one of the TENCompetence core partners as a ‘subcontractor’. TENCompetence Criteria for approval SMEs wishing to put in a proposal will need to demonstrate: For a travel allowance:

A clear explanation of your intended participation;
what your contribution will be;
what results you expect.

For a new service:

Evidence of expertise to design and develop e-services in general;
Evidence of ability to develop service(s) conforming to the TENCompetence service architecture and requirements;
Ability to deliver and execute the proposal within the specified period;
Ability to link to an existing pilot – of their choice or assigned- to verify pre-defined success criteria for their service(s).

For a business model:

Evidence of experience to deliver, support and organize e-learning or e-services in general;
Ability to deliver and execute the proposal within the specified period;
Ability to link to an existing pilot – of their choice or assigned- to verify pre-defined success criteria for their business model;
Evidence of ability to continue with their business model once successful.

Successful applications Successful applicants will be notified within twelve weeks of receipt of their proposals. In addition to the agreed funding, organizations will be able to call on support from the TENCompetence management and partners. Final details will depend on the proposal and will be negotiatable. To apply you need to complete the SME Subcontractor form available here and send to c.kew@bolton.ac.uk

Conference Season: Beyond Control and New Learning

2007-10-09T15:03:17+01:00

Barely a month into conference season and TENCompetence has been making its presence felt with presentations of the project and demos of its Personal Competence Manager (PCM) software at both ALT-C 2007 and EC-TEL 2007. ALT-C 2007 Hosted by the University of Nottingham, the Advanced Learning Technology Conference took place on the 4th, 5th and 6th of September. ALT-C is an annual event bringing together the best in new and inventive developments in learning technology across the HE and FE sectors in the United Kingdom. The theme of this year’s conference was billed as; “Beyond control, Learning technology for the social network generation” which provided the perfect platform for the TENCompetence project and its ongoing research into self-directed competence development. On the morning of the 5th, Chris Kew of the University of Bolton gave a sneak preview of the TENCompetence Personal Competence Manager (PCM), which, as its name suggests, is intended to facilitate the competence development process. In its current form the PCM provides “proof-of-concept” and is currently being trialled in pilots at the Univeridad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. The software is due for public release in December. A further demonstration of the software is planned for the ePorfolio conference in Maastricht on the 17th October and a workshop will be held at this autumn's EUCEN conference in Hannover, Germany on the 30th November. Also at ALT-C, the OUNL’s Peter Sloep delivered a presentation on TENCompetence related research on ad hoc transient communities. The presentation describes a Wiki-based system that facilitates peer tutoring in Learning Network-like environments. Attention is also given to the first results of a field trial of its deployment. The presentation received a lot of attention and positive feedback especially from the chair of the feedback session. Click here to view the slides. All Presentations from ALT-C are available via the conference web site EC-TEL 2007 The European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL 2007) took place on 17th to the 20th September in the slightly more exotic location of Crete. In keeping with TENCompetence ambitions, the main focus of the event was the creation of “New learning experiences on a global scale” . TENCompetence partners L3S of the University of Hannover delivered two presentations at the conference under the respective sub-themes of Technology Enhanced Learning:- supported formal / informal learning and Technology Enhanced Learning Infrastructures. The first of these offerings from De Coi et al, “Exploiting policies in an open infrastructure for lifelong learning” provided an insightful look at the use of policies to provide flexibile ways for students to, among other things, personalise preferences, control access to document and specify a student’s availability for interactive instant messaging within an infrastructure for Lifelong learning. In the second of their presentations, “Exploiting preference queries for searching learning resources”, Abel et al. look at the use of preference queries (constraint setting) to facilitate searches for learning materials in ever growing resource repositories. As they point out, integrating preferences allow for improved navigation and provide the user with a recommendation experience. In relation to the project theme of competence, Luk Vervenne of Synergetics gave a talk on the “Future of competency Management” in the context of a PROLIX. organised workshop aimed at bringing together researchers, industrial stakeholders and other interested parties involved in technology enhanced professional learning. More specifically he addressed the need for a semantic model (competency ontology) capable of serving as a model for various standards bodies. In the context of the Competence Observatory, a tool designed to monitor and capture the competences in different professional, academic and personal development fields, planned, Luk spoke of the need for a competency related web service or database schema. Rounding off the TENCompetence contribution to EC-TEL 2007, Christian Glahn, Marcus Specht and Rob Koper of the Open University of the Netherlands presented their paper “Smart Indicators on Learning Interactions” as part of the Learning Design strand. In it they argue that the use of smart indicators help actors to organise, orientate, and navigate through environments by providing contextual information that is relevant for performing learning tasks. The presentation included an overview of an initial prototype of a software system that uses smart indicators to support learner’s engagement with the learning process. An abstract is available here. Marus Specht also represented the TENCompetence project at the conference poster session. The paper, written by Chris Kew of the Univeristy of Bolton, is available here. More information on the EC-TEL conference, its programme and proceedings can be found at the conference website.

TENCompetence Recruits for Digital Cinema Pilot

2007-10-01T03:30:05+01:00

TENCompetence partner, the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona is launching a new distance learning pilot as part of its plan to disseminate digital cinema technology and provide a virtual learning environment where professionals, students, and amateurs can develop their competences and skills in producing and directing digital cinema projects. The distance learning pilot offers an introductory course on Virtual Sets Design in cooperation with Brainstorm software. The course comprises around a hundred hours of learning activities that can be freely accessed by learners. This service will be launched on October 1st and will be available for people to join over an ongoing period of at least two months.As well as providing the opportunity for subscribers to increase their digital cinema competences and knowledge, the pilot also enables learners to meet and cooperate with other professionals and scholars in the field. Registration for the course is free of charge since the pilot will be used to validate the underlying learning infrastructure. You can find more detailed information on the pilot in the brochure posted at the following url: www.tencompetence.upf.edu/virtualsets/brochure.html . If you are interested in registering and participating, please send an email to virtualsets@upf.edu The Virtual Sets distant learning pilot has been developed as part of the TENCompetence project (www.tencompetence.org)

Manchester Conference Proceedings - Out now!

2007-09-07T14:33:37+01:00

The proceedings of the 2nd TENCompetence workshop which took place at the G-mex conference centre in Manchester early this year (2007) are now available for download at: http://hdl.handle.net/1820/1023

Entitled; "Service Oriented Approaches and Lifelong Competence Development Infrastructures: Proceedings of the 2nd TENCompetence Open Workshop" the proceedings make for interesting reading and are grouped into five thematic sections: (1) support for social engagement in Lifelong Competence Development; (2) pedagogical applications of Service Oriented Architectures; (3) managing and sharing knowledge resources and activities; (4) competence development and interoperability; (5) approaches to assessment.Happy reading.

TENCompetence public forums

2007-07-21T16:08:15+01:00

The TENCompetence
Public Forums are now available on this site. All the software produce by the project is released as Open Source, and so we more than welcome public participation in the forums from everyone interested in the software, rationale and methodology of the project.
The current forums are

Installing and working with the Personal Competence Manager
Life Long Competence Development
Making use of the TENCompetence Personal Competence Manager
Learning Design

Please let us know if you see a need for new forums.

You can read the forums without registering, but we recommend that you register using the link available to the top right of the forum pages.
Registering will enable you to make postings, and you will also receive
occasional emails from the project about events, software releases, and
other project news.

We also recommend that you subscribe to the RSS feed and/or eMail notification, as described in a posting at About
these forums

Pilot PCM Training Workshop, June 21st, Barcelona

2007-06-01T16:10:39+01:00

The TENCompetence PCM pilot workshop took place on Thursday 21st June. It was led by Milos Kravcik (OUNL), who provided an overview of the project rationale, and Ruud Lemmers (LogicaCMG) who provided a demonstration of the client software. The session provided a preview of the currently unreleased version of the Personal Competence Management (scheduled for public release later in 2007) and included user specific demos for authors, tutors and learners. As well as providing practical information on the use of the TENCompetence client, the workshop served to further exemplify the project's commitment to integrating an appropriate technical and organisational infrastructure in the context of lifelong competence development.Further PCM workshops and demos will be held for the benefit of Associate Partners wishing to run pilots, and more general events aimed at promoting the project concepts and tools are also expected to run in the near future. For further details on upcoming events and any suggestions for future activities please contact: Chris Kew and watch this space!

TENCompetence Open Workshop on Current research on IMS Learning Design and Lifelong Competence Development Infrastructures

2007-04-24T11:38:16+01:00

The TENCompetence Open Workshop ran on June 21 and 22nd at the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.The agenda and the presentations are available here. The objective of the workshop was to identify and analyse current research and technologies in the fields that provide the building blocks for the development of an open source infrastructure that contains all the services needed to support individuals, teams and organisations to (further) develop their competences, using all the distributed knowledge resources, learning activities, units of learning and learning routes/programmes that are available online.Two previous workshops were organised by the project, in Sofia, Bulgaria, March 2006 , where a special focus was Learning Networks; and Manchester, UK, January 2007, with Service Oriented Approaches as the theme. E-portfolios will be the focus of a forthcoming event in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in October 2007. The next workshop related event is scheduled to run as part of ePortolio 2007 in October.