The document discusses the need to standardize frameworks for skills, competence, and learning outcomes given issues like workforce disruption, migration, and cultural differences. It argues that people need efficient retraining which requires recognizing existing skills and just training what's missing. However, different frameworks currently don't correspond well, so there is a need for common reference points and tools to import, modify, and export frameworks using a common interoperability specification, like an updated version of InLOC. It suggests developing an updated specification along with implementation tools through an open and consensus-driven process.

1. The need to standardize the
represention of frameworks of skills,
competence, learning outcomes
(InLOC or an update?)

2. 2
Background and context
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Climate crisis; wars
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Mass displacement, migration, refugees
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Economic turbulence leading to more career
shifting even without migration
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Cultural, national, regional differences
– both in language and in skill content

3. 3
Increasing need for retraining
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Integrating people into new environments
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Disruption of established career pathways
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Retraining from zero makes no sense
– it wastes learner’s time and training resources
– it is demotivating being taught things you know
– longer training time → shorter practice time

4. 4
How should or could retraining work?
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Recognise existing skills and competence
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Convert language
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Train just the extra skills that are not present
– which could have been acquired either through
formal training or from various experience

5. 5
But …
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How do we know whether a skill is actually present?
– when the frameworks don’t match
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Different frameworks typically do not cross-map
– in terms of both structure and content: think about:
– e.g. law traditions: common vs civil vs islamic
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legislation content also differs widely within a tradition
– e.g. medicine:
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different common conditions and healthcare traditions
– your own examples?

6. 6
Need for common reference points
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Represent the same skills in the same way
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Find better correspondence at lower levels
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Need to give frameworks low-level detail
– decomposition of generic to particular

7. 7
Reuse aids commonality
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The more that frameworks are reused, the more
similarity there is likely to be
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So, how can we support reuse?

8. 8
Principle of laziness
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If something is good enough, people generally
will not put in more effort than necessary
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The easier it is to modify an existing framework,
the less likely people are to invent new ones
covering the same ground
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So how can we make reuse easy?

9. 9
Need for supporting tools
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Importing, modifying and exporting frameworks
needs support from tools that are not there yet
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The tools need to be built around a common
way to represent frameworks
– i.e. an technical interoperability specification

10. 10
What kind of interoperability spec?
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Needs to be able to represent all common ways
of describing frameworks, clearly and easily
– including skills, competence, learning outcomes
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That is exactly what InLOC set out to do
– but its development had no implementation
– could be done better and more openly

11. 11
Can we just use InLOC as is?
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The work is around 10 years old
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Needs bringing up to date with current practice
– abandon XML, prefer JSON-LD
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Some details seem less than satisfactory
– in particular, the way that levels are handled, which is a
fundamental part of the specification
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needs a separate sub-specification for level schemes

12. 12
Ways forward
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Broader consensus
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Develop spec along with tool implementation
– supporting framework import, edit, export, use
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Ensure fit with the most valuable use cases
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Working group, like the old workshop
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Open development
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As simple as possible (but no simpler!)

13. 13
And how about a name refresh?
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From “InLOC” to “UnLOCS”?
– Lots of other people using “Unloc” or “UNLOC”
– but not “UnLOCS”
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Could stand for, e.g.:
– “Unifying Learning Outcomes, Competence, Skills”

14. 14
Thanks
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Interested in participating in this work?
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Contact me or any others from the team
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asimong@gmail.com — Simon Grant