Sustainable Competence Management with Ontology-Based Competency Catalogs

Sustainable Competence Management with Ontology-Based Competence Catalogs Andreas Schmidt FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Karlsruhe Christine Kunzmann Kompetenzorientierte Personalentwicklung Germany [email_address] [email_address]

Motivation
Competencies as abstractions of work-relevant human behavior are a promising concept for a holistic view human resource development
Knowledge management
knowledge, skills and abilities are broader than the notion of „knowledge“
=> work-relevant competency to act
Training
competencies allow for operationalizing learning goals and outcomes
=> control instrument for needs analysis, training design, and assessment
Competence Management
individual competencies can be aggregated into organizational competencies

Research Objectives
Fundamental Challenges of competency-oriented approaches:
well-defined common understanding of each competency across various departments or even organizations
various systems and services involved in HR, training, and knowledge management need to be semantically coherent
crucial trade-off in competency modelling needs to be solved:
the more accurate, realistic and fine-grained considered competencies are
the more complex management and controlling tasks become

General Approach
A reference model for ontology-based approaches to competency-oriented human resource development.
How to connect strategic and operational HR processes with the help of the competency catalog as a mediating artefact
How to ensure continuous updating of such a catalog
This reference model is divided into
a conceptual part ( ontology )
and a reference process

Developing a Reference Ontology
Based on experiences in EU project Learning in Process and industrial projects
Core idea: LearningOpportunity as a universal concept
unifying formal and informal learning opportunities
formal learning objects have objectives informal opportunities have a topic
OrganizationalEntities (processes, organizational units, roles)
Competencies as a bridge
objectives for learning resources
competencies of colleagueas
requirements for organizational entities
topics as weak competency notions

Professional Learning Ontology (Top-Level)
Upper-level ontology as a reference model
available at
www.professional-learning.eu

Benefits of Ontology-based Approach
Enabling interoperability
integrating KM, learning management and competency management systems
More advanced services for learning support
competency gap analysis
recommendation of learning resources
compilation of learning programs
=> These services make use of competency relationships especially subsumtion

Competency-driven learning services

Reference Process
What is missing: How to make use of and maintain competency models in a real enterprise environment => sustainability
avoid outdated competency models
avoid over-formalization of top-down approaches
built-in continous improvement
Three layers of responsibility
normative layer => top management
strategic layer => medium and lower management
operational layer => employees and lower management
Closed Loop Approach

Reference Process

Results from a pilot study
Results from a pilot study at a German hospital
nursing domain, 600 competencies collected and modeled
Main challenges:
Current technological solutions for process support
assume a relatively stable competency catalog
separate the tasks on operational and strategic levels
are not geared towards large competency catalogs
Modeling effort has to be reduced by developing competency frameworks
Thinking in competencies has to be established on all levels

Conclusions
Ontology-driven approach to competency-oriented human resource development
enables high degree of semantic coherency among various systems and services
provides the basis for enhanced ways of support
needs to be embedded in a closed-loop approach of continuous updating
Currently, the approach is extended towards ePortfolio activities

Outlook
FP7 IP MATURE – http://mature-ip.eu
will investigate the harvesting of bottom-up approaches to support the maturing of competency models
Ontology Outreach Advisory
Contributing to making HR Technology more semantic (e.g., via HR-XML)
Andreas Schmidt Department Manager FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Karlsruhe, GERMANY andreas.schmidt@fzi.de, http://andreas.schmidt.name Christine Kunzmann Kompetenzorientierte Personalentwicklung GERMANY, http://kompetenzen-gestalten.de [email_address]

Sustainable Competence Management with Ontology-Based Competency Catalogs

by Andreas Schmidt on Oct 24, 2007

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