Semantic ontologies for a social network of competencies

In this paper we propose the integration of the FOAF ontology, used to model people and their personal contacts, with semantic ontologies related to student competencies. In particular, the use of ontologies and other semantic web technologies allows us to create relations between the evolution of student educational experiences and their social network. For this to happen, we integrate FOAF with the IMS Learning Information Package model in order to create a new Web 2.0 learning environment. 1 Semantic ontologies for a social network of competencies The Information Society dramatically increases the opportunities for knowledge acquisition, participation in social networks, creation of communities of practice and collaborative content sharing. The content sharing system Connexions, the user built encyclopedia Wikipedia, the learning object management system FreeLOms [1] are example in which users share their competencies to create new knowledge. As stated by S. Downes [2] “the emergence of the Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution”. There are also some critiques for the unstructured content organization in the Web 2.0 world. Due to the heterogeneity of the nature of social contribution sharing models, searching, connecting and retrieving these kinds of contents has become more complex. Currently Web 2.0 applications are following an unstructured approach in which the meanings of published contents is often self-assigned by users through tagging activities . The semantic web technologies provide standards and models which could be useful for creating a network of data, with unified models that can represent data from different sources appropriately. Adding semantics to the web provides easier search mechanisms, supports the reuse of contents and creates more connections between different types of contents. Moreover, the semantic web offers a generic infrastructure to interchange, integrate and reuse structural data, and this can help in overcoming the limits of Web 2.0 platforms. The unification of semantic web technologies and social paradigms gives rise to "Social Semantic Information Spaces" in which information is socially created and managed, as well as being interconnected and available in a machine understandable format, promoting new methodologies to discover information present on the web [3]. In this perspective, the concept of networked learning is drastically changing. Students interact and collaborate in new ways thus leading to the definition of new learning environments; they are different from traditional on line learning environments, since learning contexts and social spaces tend to be more and more integrated. In these less structured environments, in which the interactions with other users become increasingly significant, adding and making use of information concerning the competencies of the learners become an opportunity. Consequently, the use of software to model learner profiles and to manage them in a semantic way appears ever more important. ICL 2009 Proceedings Page 675 Conference ICL2009 September 23 -25, 2009 Villach, Austria 2(6) The semantic web provides a technological substrate to set up the base for creating ontological systems able to model competencies in the Web 2.0 informal educational environments. In this paper we consider the problems connected to the description of competencies in informal learning environments within social networks mediated by technologies. In particular, we propose the integration of the FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) ontology, which is used to model people and their personal contacts, with a semantic ontology related to student competencies. The use of ontologies and of the related semantic web technologies allows us to create relationships between the students’ ongoing educational experiences and the evolution of their social network. For this to happen, we integrate the FOAF ontology with the IMS Learning Information Package model, thus supporting the creation of a new Web 2.0 learning environment based on social networks and competencies. 2 Learner model and competencies standards As reported in literature there are various definitions of learning competency; in our study we consider the definition of Bloom and Wallace. They started from the concepts of Knowledge, Skills, Abilities, and Other Characteristics (indicated with KASOC acronym) and consider the competency as “A specific, identifiable, definable, and measurable knowledge, skill, ability and/or other deployment-related characteristic (e.g. attitude, behavior, physical ability) which a human resource may possess and which is necessary for, or material to, the performance of an activity within a specific business context”. We extend this concept taking into consideration that competencies are strictly related to the abilities acquired across the lifelong learning experiences. The importance to describe the person's education and career development both at university and companies level have led to the definition of various standards, supported by different worldwide organizations. Among them the most relevant are the following : − IEEE PAPI is a specification developed by the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee Working Group designed to describe learner information for communication among cooperating systems [4]. This standard stores descriptive information regarding six main categories connected to the following types of information: personal, relation, security, preference, performance and portfolio. Personal information is private information related to the learner such as name, surname, address and so on. Relations information represents learner's relationship to teachers, tutors and other students. Security information contains passwords, and other private credential. Preference information shows information related to human-computer interactions. Performance information is are connected to the learner’s experience development. Finally, Portfolio information describes learner’s works useful to define abilities and achievements. − IMS Learning Information Package, defines a data model focused on the description of learners’ experiences, goals and accomplishments [5]. LIP is divided into eleven categories and includes information about : educational achievement from school through to college, and other information related to professional development activities undertaken, personal achievement, relevant work experience, qualifications and education history. To define learner competencies, these standards are related to other data models specialized in the description of competencies. Even in this field there is not a common adopted standard but there are different models with specific characteristics. The most relevant models are summarized in the following list: − IMS RDCEO (Reusable Definitions of Competence and Educational Objective) is a data model designed to define, describe, reference and exchange competencies and learning ICL 2009 Proceedings Page 676 Conference ICL2009 September 23 -25, 2009 Villach, Austria 3(6) objectives. This is an extensible model based on XML. The undertaken data model supports the definition of competencies both in structured and unstructured mode. The structured mode uses a collection of different types of Statements in order to define Condition, Action, Standard, Outcome and Criteria related to competencies. The unstructured mode, instead, is based on a human-readable format description. − IEEE RCD (Reusable Competency Definitions) is based on the IMS RDCEO, previously presented. This standard has been defined by the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee and consists of a data model for describing, referencing and sharing competency definitions. The RCD standard provides a formal way of representing the key characteristics of a competency, independently of the context. The main aim of this standard is the interoperability of systems based on competencies by means of a standardized common model that defines competencies. − HR-XML Competency Schema [6] is a set of specifications developed with the aim of simplify the management of the different aspects of human resources. This specification uses two different XML schema to manage competencies: CompetencyType schema and Competencies schema. The CompetencyType is based on two main concepts: CompetencyId, SpecifiedCompetencyReferenceType. The first is used to create a reference to a single competency or a group of competencies within a specialized taxonomy. The Competencies schema is designed to support an easy and flexible management of the competencies. This standard does not define a taxonomy of competencies either tools to create an explicit mapping between elements coming from different taxonomies. 3 Using semantic web technologies to describe competencies in