A new competency ontology for learning environments personalization

Abstract

Competency is a central concept for human resource management, training and education. We define a competency as the capacity of a person to display a generic skill with a certain level of performance when applied to one or more knowledge entities. Competencies, and competency referentials grouping competencies, are essential elements for user models, e-Portfolios, adaptive learning, and personalization in Technology-based learning. But to be processed both by humans and by software tools, competencies should be represented in a formal, non-ambiguous model called an ontology. Moreover, this model should use a shared vocabulary to describe the generic skills and the knowledge entities. Defining and linking shared vocabularies is the purpose of ontologies in the semantic web. The goal of our research is to develop a competency ontology for the semantic web to be used as a shared referential in the description of competencies and competency profiles. We analysed five previous competency models and developed COMP2, a new competency ontology that integrates important elements of previous models and the richness of the semantic web vocabulary. COMP2 provides processing capabilities both to humans and computers. Its graphic model is highly readable by humans for design, evaluation and communication purposes. It also translates, together with its data sets, to standard semantic Web code for machine processing. The ontology is composed of five stages that are interlinked with other ontologies in use within the web of linked open data. We will present an example for the use of the ontology for competency-based personalization in learning environments.