About TENCompetenceTENCompetence is funded by the European Commission through the IST Programme. It is developing and using infrastructure to support individuals, groups and organisations in lifelong competence development. Find out more about Tencompetence and participate in our public forums.
Project OutcomesThe following links will take you directly to DSpace, the project repository, from where you can access a range of official and non-official project outcomes. Search | TENCompetence Frequently Asked QuestionsWant to know more about the project but don't know where to begin? Try the TENCompetence FAQ Contents
Frequently Asked Questions1. What does TENCompetence stand for?
The European Network for Competence. Moreover the project is broken down into ten workpackages and has a budget to the tune of 10 million Euros.
2. What are the main products of the TENCompetence project?
The aim of the project is to build a European Network for Lifelong Competence Development by establishing a technical and organizational infrastructure for lifelong competence development. The infrastructure will use open-source, standards-based, sustainable and innovative technology to support the lifelong development of competences by any citizen, team or organization. In addition to this infrastructure the project is also reporting on the research work undertaken in academic papers, which are available from the TENCompetence site.
3. What general needs does the TENCompetence project address?
For society: There is now a consensus amongst economists, educators and politicians that the concept of lifelong learning is integral to the economic vitality of our society. The TENCompetence project aims to make lifelong competence development accessible to all. The concept of Lifelong Learning was adopted in response to the Lisbon Agenda of 2000 which identified the need to provide EU citizens with the opportunity to continue learning regardless of age, social status or situation through a range of formal and informal channels. The use of information and communications technology (ICT) is now widely considered as being central to getting more people into adult learning, hence TENCompetence.
For the individual: TENCompetence addresses the need for individuals to:
• keep up to date with developments in their field of expertise. • reflect on their current competences in order to know which functions or jobs are within their reach • improve their proficiency level of a specific competence • support onon-trivial learning problems • explore the possibility in a new field (learning network) to help define new learning goals
4. Why does the project focus on a competence-based approach to lifelong learning?
A competence-based approach to lifelong learning aims to take account of all the informal and experiential learning that an individual acquires during the course of his or her lifetime rather than focusing solely on academic or theoretical achievement. This way an individual can make the most of his or her achievements, be they scholastic, work-based or the result of a leisure pursuit. The concept of competence development bridges the worlds of education, training, knowledge management, HRM & informal learning all domains which, hitherto, operated in relative isolation in respect of one another.
A competence approach to lifelong learning ensures that the pursuit of a learning goal does not happen in a vacuum, but is bound instead to a precisely defined purpose such as an occupation, a profession, a market or a particular life or work situation.
5. What is meant by the term “Competence”?
The concept of competence has many different definitions and has many facets. In the TENCompetence project our view of competences is as follows: 1. A competence is a disposition of an actor 2. A competence can be attributed to individuals, teams and organisations 3. A competence is situational 4. A competence is a latent attribute 5. A competence is identified and defined in a community of practice
6. What is the TENCompetence Personal Competence Manager?
The Personal Competence Manager is a place where a user has access to tools for organizing participation and authoring of competence development programmes within the context of social networks focused on competence development. The system helps the user to handle the complexity which this involves by enabling the user to access and manage all the different aspects from various sources in a single environment. The first version of the Personal Competence Manager is a Java application programmed using the Eclipse Rich Client Platform. It makes use of specialized services provided by TENCompetence servers, and also publicly available services.
7. What specific requirements will the TENCompetence Personal Competence Manager respond to?
There are a number of end user requirements that the PCE aims to fulfill. These include:
An overview of relevant resources
For prospective learners with a particular learning need, locating pertinent and high quality learning resources from both formal and informal sources can be both time consuming and frustrating. The PCM will catalogue and recommend resources based on the learner’s goals, background knowledge and competence profile.
Assessing and validating a learner’s competences
Learning from many formal and informal resources leaves us with the problem that we cannot provide evidence for all our competences TENCompetence aims to provide methods and technologies which will enable an individual to assess their personal competences, compare them with others and then reflect on the results.
8. What is “personal” about the Personal Competence Manager?
The term “personal” indicates that individuals should be able to control the system in the same way that they control a personal computer. The system is based around the needs of the person who wants to develop their competences, rather than on the needs of an educational, government or industrial institution. The system brings together those aspects of the competence development environment which are relevant to the user, and provides appropriate tools to interact with them. This is true for people in all kinds of roles, for example:
The system also enables users to switch between roles in the different activities in which they are involved without having to move to a new application or context.
9. What tools and services does it include?
The Personal Competence Manager incorporates a number of different tools and services across a number of servers. It is be based on a Service Oriented Architecture and will be Open Source and Standards based. The PCD can in principal connect to an unlimited number of services, but some of the specialized services it will use are:
10. How will the PCD system work?
The PCD facilitates the creation of Competence Development Networks, each of which is related to a single domain (e.g. opticians network, healthcare network, plumbing network etc.). Each network can develop and publish a competence framework that stipulates the criteria necessary to achieve proficiency at a number of levels in the domain. Any user can set up and run a new network at any time, without the need to get authorization, and can invite anyone to participate.The system can run Competence Development Programmes that the user can complete in order to attain the level of proficiency required to be considered competent in the domain.The programmes are composed of learning activities or units of learning that can be shared across the network. The competence development activities and units of learning include knowledge resources that are available to and shared across the network. Members of the network will be ‘learners’ as well as providers of competence development activities and resources. In the course of their activities, members will interact and support one another through sharing, feedback and discussion.
11. When will the PCM be released?
The first release of the system is planned for June 2007 The final release is planned for December 2009.
12. Will the use of the infrastructure cost anything?
All the infrastructure created by the project will be free and open source. Some commercial services may be established to make use of this infrastructure, or to add value to it.
13. This is a giant undertaking. Isn’t this going to be very labour intensive if not impossible to develop?
Yes, it is a big job, but it is possible because the project is building on and integrating components that have already been developed or which are already under development. The project is also leveraging the extensive prior experience in this area provided by a number of the core partners.
14. How does TENCompetence differ from other initiatives in the field?
Other competence-based systems do exist but are limited by virtue of the fact that they are owned, run and managed by institutions (examining bodies, professional organisations, education systems, human resources departments, employment agencies etc.) rather than the by the learner. A comparison of features afforded by generic systems and those afforded by the PCM are outlined in the table below:
Taken from Griffiths, D. & Koper, R. (2006)
15. How will the system be evaluated?
The system will be evaluated through a series of realistic scenarios and pilots that will serve to challenge and validate development from the initial set-up of the scenarios in the first instance through to full scale validation of the definitive system. There are 4 major pilots planned to test and evaluate the proposed infrastructure. To date the pilots include:
Additional pilots are also planned. Please contact Chris Kew <C.Kew@bolton.ac.uk> if you would like to be involved in running a pilot
16. Who is funding TENCompetence ?
TENCompetence is a Framework 6 IST/TEL Integrated Project funded by the European Commission. The project will run over a period of four years from December 2005 to December 2009
The project includes 15 core partners from 9 European countries and a network of associated partners. The core partners include:
You can support the TENCompetence objective of supporting individuals, groups and organisations in Europe in lifelong competence development by becoming an Associate Partner.The benefits of becoming an associate partner include: immediate access to the latest project documentation like any full partnerinvitations to participate in on-line and real-life project discussions and events participation in test beds, pilots and demonstrators access to specialised training provision of links to other professional communities in the life-long learning domain Depending on your profile and sense of purpose, you can sign up for a number of different roles within the consortium.
For more details on Associate Partnership visit: http://www.tencompetence.org/node/16 or contact Chris Kew at c.kew@bolton.ac.uk
Griffiths.D & Koper, R (2006). The TENCompetence “Personal Competence Manager”: what it is, and why is it important. Retrieved January 30, 2007, from TENCompetence web site: http://www.tencompetence.org/node/96
Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this document. Peter Sloep (OUNL) Rob Koper (OUNL) Marlies Bitter (OUNL) Jocelyn Mandeveld (SURF) Dai Griffiths (UB) Submitted by ckew on 12 March, 2007 - 13:32.
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TENCompetence is an IST project funded by the European Commission
