Simon Grant

Distinguishing binary and rankable definitions is key to structuring competence frameworks

What is the difference between binary and rankable?

• try touch typing as an example

• can think of many more examples in areas such as– playing the piano

– swimming

– coding

– playing chess

– martial arts

A binary competence definition

• (or, more fully, binarily assessable)

• does it make sense to ask– “are you as good as this?”

– “have you attained this level?”

• needs detailed description, like – “can touch type in English at 60 wpm with fewer than 1

mistake per hundred words”

• people could be divided into just two groups– those who have that level of ability (or greater)

– those who do not yet have that level of ability

A rankable competence definition

• (or, more fully, rankably assessable)

• does it make sense to ask– “how good are you as this?”

– “what level have you achieved?”

• needs less detail, like – “can touch type”

• people could be put in rank order of their ability– along a single scale

• (and more complex definitions are certainly possible)

What if you only have binary definitions?

• some may subsume others

• if you have an ordered set, you can abstract a rankable ability definition

• typing 30 40 50 60 etc wpm: general typing ability

• e.g. piano grades 1 to 8: playing the piano

• chess, with Elo ratings: playing chess

• Judo (etc.) belt level definitions: martial art ability

What if you have a rankable definition?

• you can set criteria for each level

• each level subsumes the levels below it

• (same examples as before, the other way round)

InLOC has key advantages

• InLOC (2011 to 2013) took up the challenge

– work started by IEEE under the title

• “Simple Reusable Competency Maps”

– which stalled around 2006

• InLOC created a robust approach for levels

• see http://www.cetis.org.uk/inloc/Home

How does InLOC do it?

• InLOC treats binary and rankable "definitions" similarly

• maybe a rankable definition "hasDefinedLevel" a binary definition

• that binary definition "isDefinedLevelOf" the rankable definition

• with each of these relationships, a "number" is attached

• the numbers define which levels are higher and which are lower

• the number relates a binary to a specific rankable

• binary may have different level numbers in different frameworks

• rankable has just one set of levels in any particular framework

• (see much more in the InLOC documentation)

Do we really need this?

• yes, really

• this is (I think) why competencies have been so difficult to do properly in the past

• the team and I tried many different approaches, and this one seemed to be the simplest one that works

• if you think you've found a simpler way, let me know!– I'll take a good look and offer a comparative evaluation

Implications for referencing

• you can refer to a full binary definition with one IRI / URI / URL without great risk of ambiguity

• or, if you know you can retrieve other details from the URL, then just one may still be OK anyway

• but to be sure, you may want to refer at the same time to the structure (framework etc.) in which it sits

• there are other possibilities using more than one URI

• see extensive discussion at http://www.cetis.org.uk/inloc/Referencing+InLOC+information

Summary

• levels of competence were a real conundrum

• InLOC found a good way to deal with these

• understanding “binary” and “rankable” definitions and their interplay makes things much clearer and easier

• please feel free to use that approach

References

• http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/asimong/2011/01/07/levels-of-competence/

• http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/asimong/2011/09/06/level-relationships/

• (items in the series http://blogs.cetis.org.uk/asimong/2010/11/19/the-logic-of-competence/ )

• paper, “What is a level of competence?”

– http://www.simongrant.org/pubs/2011_COME-HR/index.html

• InLOC http://www.cetis.org.uk/inloc/Home

– Information Model http://www.cetis.org.uk/inloc/Information+Model

– treatment of levels http://www.cetis.org.uk/inloc/InLOC+treatment+of+levels

– InLOC explained through example http://www.cetis.org.uk/inloc/InLOC+explained+through+example

• (uses the example of the European e-Competence Framework, which has levels)

Thanks: here's your sharing licence

This presentation

“Distinguishing binary and rankable definitions is key to structuring competence frameworks”

by Simon Grant (asimong (gmail etc.); @asimong)

of Cetis http://www.cetis.org.uk/ is licensed under the

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/