A competence bartering platform for learners

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of a currency-free competence exchange platform in the context of communities of self-regulated learners exploiting personal learning environments. In a life-long perspective, learners can be seen as potential teachers of the skills they collect and develop all along their experience. Currently, spontaneous assistance is a common practice but remains limited to acquaintance groups. Our goal is to foster the emergence of self-driven communities by enabling learners to make available or find competences, to arrange coaching sessions, and to get reusable credits in return. This paper details our investigations on competence models and decentralized credit systems on which the design of our Competence Bartering Platform is grounded. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.