TENCompetence will support individuals, groups and organisations in Europe in lifelong competence development by establishing the most appropriate technical and organisational infrastructure, using opensource standards-based, sustainable and innovative technology

TENCompetence is a 4-year EU-funded Integrated IST-TEL project that will develop a technical and organisational infrastructure for lifelong competence development. The infrastructure will use open-source, standards-based, sustainable and innovative technology. With this freely available infrastructure the European Union aims to boost the European ambitions of the Knowledge Society, by providing all European citizens, SMEs and other organisations easy access to facilities that enable the lifelong development of competencies and expertise in the various occupations and fields of knowledge.

The TENCompetence infrastructure will support the creation and management of networks of individuals, teams and organisations in Europe who are actively involved in the various occupations and domains of knowledge. These 'learning networks' will support the lifelong competency development of the participants from the basic levels of proficiency up to the highest levels of excellence. The network consists of learners, educational institutes, libraries, publishers, domain specific vendors, employers, associations, and all others who deliver services or products in the specific field.

• competency frameworks for the different occupations/fields of knowledge
• formal as well as informal learning facilities, including the sharing of knowledge, learning activities, units of learning and learning programmes
• the learning of individuals as well as of teams and organisations
• all levels of learning: primary, secondary and tertiary education, adult and company training and other forms of informal learning
• social exchange mechanisms to stimulate the exchange, sharing and support between the individuals, teams and organisations within the network.

• develop new innovative pedagogical approaches, assessment models and organisational models for lifelong competence development
• develop software for the effective support of users who create, store, use and exchange knowledge resources, learning activities, units of learning and competence development programmes within a learning network
• integrate isolated models and tools for competence development into a common, easy to use infrastructure
• run pilots, at least in the field of digital cinema, health care, water management and lifelong learning cities, to ensure the validity and viability of the approach
• deliver training programs to teach users how to work with the infrastructure, and to train instructors and companies (specifically SMEs) to deliver services using the infrastructure
• build a growing network of associated partners to ensure large-scale use in Europe.

The project involves 15 partners from 9 different countries:

Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL), / Educational Technology Expertise Centre (OTEC) (project leader), the Netherlands.

 The Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) is an independent government-funded institute for distance learning at university level. The OUNL has a three missions: 

1. To create an effective, attractive, accessible and cost-effective form of higher education, usingnew technologies .

2. to innovate higher education, by research into teaching methods, development of new learningtechnologies and by supporting implementation of new concepts and technologies.

3. To reduce the teacher shortage in Dutch primary and secondary schools. 

 Altran (ALTRAN SDB), Spain

Software de Base S.A. (Altran SDB) is a Spanish company, with more than 300 consultants, located inMadrid. The firm is specialised in High Technologies in many branches engineering, with a particular focus the sectors of Telecommunication and Computer sciences and Consulting services. The company has its own R&D department which designs and carries out projects. We have a deep know how in emerging technologies, and collaborate frequently with University foundations in their initiation of professional programmes and scholarships for recent graduates. Ownership of SDB by the Altran Group, with more than 70 independent companies in the major European countries, means wehave access to a full range of expertise in all technical and engineering fields.

 LogicaCMG, the Netherlands

LogicaCMG is a major international force in IT services and wireless telecoms. It provides management and IT consultancy, systems integration and outsourcing services to clients across diverse markets including telecoms, financial services, energy and utilities, industry, distribution and transport and the public sector. Formed in December 2002, through the merger of Logica and CMG, the company employs around 20,000 staff in offices across 34 countries and has nearly 40 years of experience in IT services. Headquartered in Europe, LogicaCMG is listed on both the London and Amsterdam stock exchanges.

 Universitat Pompeu Fabra, (FBM-UPF)Spain

The Fundacio Barcelona Media Universitat Pompeu Fabra (www.ec.upf.es) is a non-profit-making organisation established in 2002. The parent organisation, Universitat Pompeu Fabra (www.upf.es), is a rapidly expanding public university founded in 1990. The Fundacio is responsible for the Estacio de la Comunicacio, which groups together on a single site academic departments in computer science, telematics, and digital communication technology, and the Institut Universitari de l'Audiovisual (www.iua.upf.es) an interdisciplinary centre integrating the fields of engineering, science, design, computing and communication. Together these run a number of successful post-graduate programs in digital media and a PhD programme on Communication and Digital Media attracting 70 students from all over the world.

GIUNTI Interactive Labs s.r.l  (ILABS) Italy ILABS

For over ten years Giunti Interactive Labs s.r.l. has been a leader in e-Learning content production for third parties and in the implementation of technological solutions and services for training (Technology Based Learning, TBL). Headquartered in Florence, with operating subsidiaries in Genoa, Milan and Sestri Levante and a US Office in San Francisco, the company integrates heterogeneous new media professionals, with a reference of more than 300 projects successfully realised for companies, institutes and national and international universities.

 Centre for Research and Technology, Hellas, (CERTH/ITI), Greece

The Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (C.E.R.T.H.) is a National Research Center operating under the supervision of the Greek General Secreteriat for Research and Technology. It was founded in March 2000 and its mission is to carry out applied research with emphasis in exploiting Research Results and developing innovative services with industrial, economic and social added value.

The Informatics and Telematics Institute was founded in 1998. Since March 2000 has been one of the four constituent institutes of the Centre of Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH). Today, ITI has grown into a completely self-financed organisation attracting external funds at the range of 15MEuro during the past 5 years.

 Universität Hannover, (UHANN), Germany

The L3S Research Center was founded in 2001 as a joint institute of the University of Hannover, Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina at Brunswick, and the Brunswick School of Arts with additional members from Mannheim and (recently) Kassel. Work at L3S has focused on innovative information systems, on learning and knowledge technologies and on innovative concepts and infrastructures for training and continuing education in academia and industry. L3S projects include research, consulting, and technology transfer in all of these areas, provision of infrastructure and support for innovative teaching and learning technologies at the participating universities, and collaboration with both German and international standardization bodies.

Institut Européen d'Administration Des Affaires, (INSEAD), France

INSEAD (www.insead.edu) is one of the world's largest top-tier graduate business schools, with two comprehensive and fully connected campuses in Asia (Singapore) and Europe (France). Currently, 147 faculty members from 33 countries teach more than 840 MBA participants, 54 executive MBAs, 6,500 executives and 73 PhD candidates. INSEAD's unique global perspective and multicultural diversityare reflected in all aspects of its research and teaching. The INSEAD-Wharton Alliance, announced in May 2001, combines INSEAD's resources with those of Wharton's campuses in Philadelphia and San Francisco, to deliver business education and research across a Global Learning Network.

CALT, INSEAD's Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies, is one of the leading research centres in the field of new learning technologies in management education (and in particular aspects such as management practices or organization dynamic). CALT has built an innovative body of insights and tools in the domains of Management Education (in particular with the design of advanced business simulation games), Knowledge Management (in particular the dynamic of knowledge exchange in virtual communities) and Electronic Commerce (managing relationship, learning).

 The University of Bolton (UB)/ representing CETIS

The University of Bolton is the UK's newest University, having previously been known as the Bolton Institute of Higher Education. The University has made a major commitment to eLearning through its establishment of a chair in eLearning, currently held by Professor Oleg Liber. He directs the internationally renowned Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards (CETIS), which provides a national service to UK Higher and Further Education by representing the community on international efforts to develop interoperability standards and supporting and promoting their adoption. 

CETIS is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Universities and Colleges Funding Councils (JISC), and as one of its leading services, represents JISC on international bodies and partnerships involved in eLearning developments, including all eLearning standardisation bodies (IMS, IEEE, CEN/ISSS, ISO) and the international eLearning Framework partnership.

 Universiteit van Amsterdam, (UvA), the Netherlands

The SCO-Kohnstamm Institute for Educational Research, part of the University of Amsterdam (SCO), is one of the top-ranking research and reference centres in Europe specialising in commissioned research on education, upbringing and child welfare. More than 80 highly-qualified researchers from different disciplines work at SCO. One of the main 15 research themes is information and communication technology (ICT) in education and training. Within the field SCO has participated inand led several present and past larger national and international projects, including EU (IST) projects.

These projects involve both commissioned and fundamental research and are aimed at all types of education. SCO deploys a range of advice and consultancy activities for local, national and international governments. SCO maintains direct and regular contact with teachers within primary and secondary education in almost all European countries.

The Centre of Information Society Technologies (CIST) is an interdisciplinary research, development and training institution of Sofia University. It was established in 1999 by Council of Rectors' Statement No 24/07.06.1999). Its main objective is to create and establish fruitful co-operation between the University - the academic community and industry - SMEs, NGOs, public administration, local community, banking and financial institutions for co-ordinating the efforts in spreading the IST wide implementation and use. CIST takes the role of a regional development centre by integrating the efforts of the main stakeholders: government, municipalities, SMEs, academic institutions, banks and financial institutions, international organisations and a large network of international partners. The Centre has built a strong competence in developing and delivering distance-learning programs via Internet.

Stichting SURF, (SURF), the Netherlands

SURF is the Dutch higher education and research partnership organisation for network services and information and communications technology (ICT). The Mission of SURF is to exploit and improve a common advanced ICT infrastructure that will enable higher education institutes better realise their own ambitions and improve the quality of learning, teaching and research. SURF achieves this by three platforms that address specific areas of ICT and Higher Education with innovation programs and by two limited subsidiaries SURFnet and SURFdiensten BV.

Synergetics, (SYN), Belgium

Synergetics nv, based in Antwerp, Belgium has been active in knowledge transfer since 1995. Synergetics was co-founder of NetVision, now www.ubizen.com and of Europe's first Digital Certificate Authority Belsign. Synergetics also performs the Business Development for VUB/Starlab (semantics, ontologies). The last three years the company focused on innovative (learning) content management. Synergetics nv has been active to combine the above focussed on HR services in general and competencies in particular. We are co-founding member of HR-XML Europe, run the EC projectCODRIVE, and are currently developing a state of the art "semantic matching of competencies" concept, based on the Dogma framework of VUB/Starlab and of a multiple criteria decision support system.

UNESCO-IHE

(http://www.unesco-ihe.org) UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education is dedicated to scientific research, postgraduate education and training in the fields of water, the environment and infrastructure. The Institute is a globally active "partner in action", through solution-oriented research, education and capacity building operations. UNESCO-IHE determines education, training and research demands through its international network of 13,000 alumni in more than 160 countries, the Institute's community of partnerships, including public and private organisations active worldwide.

The project also includes an ever growing number of Associate Partners, contributing to the project. These include:

The Computer Architecture and Technology Department (CATD), University of Seville, Spain

(http://www.atc.us.es/ )

The CATD is specialised in teaching and research in the field of Computer hardware and technologies supporting access for all (special needs).

Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics (FMPI), Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia

(http://cyril.fmph.uniba.sk/mffuk/e/)

FMPI provides university education in Mathematics, Physics and Informatics (Computer Science) as well as teacher training in subjects related to these branches of study.

eLearning Technology R&D laboratory (ELTL), Technical University, Sofia, Bulgaria 

(http://demlab.tu-sofia.bg/)

The mission of the Research & Development Laboratory ‘eLearning Technologies and Standards’, created in 1997 at the  Technical University – Sofia (http://demlab.tu-sofia.bg/),  is to foster projects which develop multi-party open standards-based e-learning environments(VLECADELL, MSCS, ATutor&LD, MSSharePoint&SLK&LD) and to support research into the architectures and infrastructure necessary to support e-learning systems integration. Also the main objective of the R&D Laboratory is to stimulate innovation in higher engineering education and corporative training by employing advanced educational approaches and technology enhanced learning as well as implementing global standards and specifications for learning technology (SCORM, IMS LD) in the real university environment. Through collaborations with educational organisations, government and commercial partners, the Laboratory fosters the adoption of the next generation of distributed e-learning, mobile learning and information systems.

The Department of Information Technologies, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania 

The Learning Societies Lab, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK 

(http://www.lsl.ecs.soton.ac.uk/)

Within Technology-Enhanced Learning, LSL is investigating architectures for learning systems and assessment, design for learning, competency modelling, digital libraries, m-learning, and learning objects and repositories.  In the intersection of TEL with knowledge and semantics, LSL is investigating tagging, annotation, concept mapping, semantic hypertexts, folksonomies and narratives.  In the area of virtual communities and social systems, LSL is researching collaborative systems, tools for group formation, virtual environments, games and social networking.  Within accessible technologies, LSL is investigating the use of speech recognition and captioned multimedia for more inclusive, interactive, flexible, productive and engaging learning.

MGA specialises in lifelong learning and is the lead partner for an FP7 submission.  The submission focuses on social and learning research to establish the state of readiness of organisations to take on their responsibility to ensuring lifelong learning is optimised and that Europe remains competitive in the global market.  To achieve this, the project builds on existing technology created by MGA that is capable of collating and analysing the learning data of all European lifelong learners from European standardised competency systems.

EVALFOR, University of Cadiz, Cadiz, Spain 

(http://www.uca.es/evalfor) 

EVALFOR (Evaluation and Assessment in Formative Contexts) was founded in 1995 and is an educational research group in the Faculty of Education. This research group has wide experience in regional, national and international projects and has developed activities in the following areas: Assessment in Higher Education, Assessment and e-learning, Blended-learning, Institutional Evaluation, Evaluation of Educational and Social Programmes.

GITE, Grupo de Investigación de Tecnología Educativa,Universidad de Murcia, Spain

(http://www.um.es/gite/english.htm)