The first TENCompetence event of 2007 took place at the G-mex conference centre in Manchester, UK on the 11th and 12th of January. Organised by the project partners, the conference, entitled "TENCompetence Open Workshop on Service Oriented Approaches and Lifelong Competence Development Infrastructures", attracted over seventy delegates from over forty different organisations in the fields of HR,  HE and  industry from both the UK and Europe. Click here for the presentations.

Keynotes were provided by key players from the world of Educational Technology in the UK including Professor Mark Stiles of Staffordshire University who opened the proceedings with his presentation "Control freaks in a sharing world: a bit of a dilemma?" As the title suggests, Professor Stiles addressed the difficulties inherent in maintaining "control" and "ownership" of systems, applications and processes in both education and business in the light of constant technological development. 

 Richard Millwood of Ultralab provided the second keynote of the day with an overview  of the Ultraversity project. The project started in 2003 with the aim of setting up a degree programme centred on action research in a work-based context. The presentation included an engaging set of testimonies and anecdotes in the form of short films and animation created by the students as part of their research on how to improve organisation in the work place. The results of the project provide an encouraging take on the theme of lifelong learning.

Two more keynotes took place on the second day of the workshop and included an indispensable overview of the TENCompetence project by project leader Rob Koper of the OUNL. The presentation  entitled "The Need for an Open Source Infrastructure for Lifelong Competence Development in Europe" examined the rationale behind the project  with particular reference to a number of underpinning needs including:

1. The need for an overview of all available formal and informal resources
2. The need to match resources to personal learning styles and preferences
3. The need for competence assessment that would take into account informal as well as formally acquired knowledge and skills.

Bill Olivier’s closing keynote focused on the problems by innovators in achieving adoption of their work. He argued that in this funders and projects in eLearning and Life Long Competence Development can learn a lot from the wider processes of innovation in technology in general. Building on Clayton Christensen’s model in his book “The Innovators Dilemma” he showed how informal learning can be seen as a disruptive technology, and proposed that the patterns of adoption, and the responses of the established providers, are likely to follow those patterns which are familiar for disruptive technologies. He identified a need to focus on the “chasm” between technology enthusiasts and visionaries, and the early majority of users, and suggested some ways of approaching this.

In addition to the keynotes, a total of 37 papers were accepted and presented and included a number of TENCompetence related themes such as:

• Approaches to competence development
• Managing and sharing knowledge resources
• Pedagogical Applications of SOAs
• Competences and interoperability
• Pedagogic applications of SOAs
• Paths to learning
• Working with IMS Learning Design
• Aspects of working with learning objects and designs

 This variety of topics resulted in some varied and engaging disussions during the course of the workshop which look set to continue during the next project workshop in Barcelona this June.

The presentations from the workshop are available here.