PCM FUNCTIONALITY

This section provides a first introduction into the functionality of the PCM. It is meant to give an impression of the system, not to be a complete overview, by introducing the following windows:

• Main application window

• ‘Select a Competence Profile’ view • ‘Communities’ view

TENCompetence – IST-2005-027087 Page 42 / 150 Table 1 Main entities of the PCM

Entity Description

Community A domain representing a certain profession. Users can collaborate within the context of a certain community. As such, each entity (Competence, Action, …) exists in the context of exactly one Community.

Synonym for Learning Network.

Competence Profile A set of Competences that define the minimum requirements for a specific function/job.

Competence A Competence is defined as the ability (´disposition´) of an actor to act effectively and efficiently upon the events in an ecological niche (an occupation, a hobby, a market, a sport, etc.). In short: the ability to perform effectively in a situation. Competence

Development Plan (CDP)

A Competence Development Plan (CDP; synonyms: route, learning path, curriculum, programme) is an ordered set of activities and units of learning that have to be (or are) followed to attain a certain Competence.

Action A building block for a CDP, being either an assessment or a learning activity:

a. Assessment: classical multiple choice tests to evaluate whether you master certain principles.

b. Learning activities: tasks for learners that describe what they are advised to do in order to attain certain learning or assessment objectives, given some prerequisites.

Resource Any kind of resource that can be used in learning. Typical resources are:

a. HTML pages b. Podcasts / Vodcasts c. Digital documents d. Computer programs

A Resource is normally used within one or more learning activities (Actions).

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Main application window

Figure 8 depicts the main application window of the PCM. The main PCM application window can be roughly divided into two areas. The top half area (tabs 1 & 2) contains windows intended for viewing and editing Competence Profiles, Competences, and Actions. The lower half of the main window (tabs 3, 4 & 5) contains windows that help and support the users in their task performed in the upper half. In Figure ‘main application window’ the „How to clean a bike” Competence Development Plan is the active editor (tab 2) and therefore provides the context for all windows in the lower part of the screen (Vogten et al, 2007).

Figure ‘main application window’ represents a snapshot of a situation where a community already has been created and some content has been added to this community. Furthermore any user may decide to start a new community at any moment in time. Communities are not governed by any central authority and can be set up by anyone. The creator of a community is also the owner of the community and determines policies for the community access. This principle of an entity owner controlling its access rights applies for almost all entities. The general idea is that the PCM should tend to openness whenever possible in order to stimulate active participation and contributions of all community members. The PCM relies on the principles of self- organization to regulate this process.

TENCompetence – IST-2005-027087 Page 44 / 150 The screen area showing tab 2 is used for all levels of viewing and editing Competence Profiles. When we keep zooming in on a Competence Profile, we encounter Competences, CDP’s, Actions (activities and/or assessments) and Resources. Each entity has its own editor (for a content author) and viewer (for a learner). Figure 9 shows the editor for assessments as an example. Other editors and views shown in this screen area look quite similar.

Figure 9 Assessment editor of PCM

Before a Competence Profile can be shown in the main application window, the user needs to create a Competence Profile or register to an existing one. The views ‘Select a Competence Profile’ and ‘Communities’ (see sections below) are used to do this.

‘Select a Competence Profile’ view

Being a “Personal” Competence Manager means a user can be using multiple Competence Profiles (e.g. ‘Teacher’ for work and ‘Chess trainer’ for a hobby). The ‘Select a Competence Profile’ view is the view to find or open a Competence Profile (see Figure 10). It shows all the Competence Profiles of the Communities (= Learning Networks) to one has subscribed in the past.

When making a drastic career move or picking up a new hobby, this list could be too constrained. In that case, the ‘Discover other communities’ functionality can be used to find/discover another Community that does contain better fitting Competence Profiles. ‘Discover other communities’ will show the view from the next section: ‘Communities’.

TENCompetence – IST-2005-027087 Page 45 / 150 Figure 10 Select a Competence Profile window

Communities view

This view, as illustrated in Figure 11, shows all known communities. After successfully registering for a Community, a user can use the Competence Profiles contained by that Community. If no suitable Community can be found, the user can choose to start a new Community by their own.

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Deployment (distribution and installation)

To use the PCM, the PCM client is has to be downloaded and installed on a local machine. It is available on the public SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net/ TENCompetence) site for download; the www.TENCompetence.org site also links to the download packages.

Users from the Digital Cinema pilot were given the URL of the SourceForge site to download the software (see Appendix 3).

For the users from the ICT Training pilot, all PC’s were pre-installed before the first face-to-face meeting (see section 3.7.1). As one of the tasks during this meeting, detailed instructions were given how to download and install the PCM in their native settings. These instructions were also put on a special Web site (http://e- learning.fmi.uni-sofia.bg/pcm), where pilot users could download everything needed (not only the PCM, but also other electronic resources and guides).

User support

For the Digital Cinema pilot issues could be reported by email to a special support mailbox or raised via the forums within the PCM. Besides providing support, users were also asked to provide their own feedback about their experience with the PCM and its contents.

For the ICT Training pilot support was provided through email from the instructors and peers. Some (about one third of all trained) of the trainees were not able to ask a question for help in English. During the pilot we did not encounter any significant error, so we did not pass such message neither to forum, nor to the bug list. There were several server-side problems just before the pilot start, but through the intensive work and communications between support people in FBM-UPF and other people from WP3, all the signaled problems were resolved.

During the pre-pilot several problems were encountered. These were reported to WP3 mainly during the workshop in Sofia in September.

Bug reporting

During the pilots, no problems were encountered that were so important to require the immediate release of a new patched PCM version.

The only important problem encountered in Sofia is related to performance. When more than 15-20 people start to work at the same time, the response time of the server increases significantly.

Significant bugs found during a pilot are collected and forwarded to the development team after completion of the pilot.

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