Do I need to use competencies

Do I need to use competencies

by Brendon Hatcher -
Number of replies: 11

Hi

I am in the early stages of rolling out Moodle for staff training at a construction company.

The company uses lots of different software and has different user roles.  
I plan to make courses for each software (or even for modules within the software).
I may also end up with different courses for the same software, focusing on how the software applies to specific user roles.

At the moment I have limited users, courses and activities set up, and even less user activity data.
I am therefore finding it hard to visualise how the course and user data will look once there are lots of courses, users and activity results in the system.

I can see that we can know (and visualise) which staff have successfully completed specific Moodle courses, or activities within a specific course. 
This will be useful to the business, and manageable in terms of Moodle core functions and perhaps some plugins.

However, I am concerned that a business question may be "Who is competent to do x", where the answer requires an assessment of selected activities and results across several courses.  Is this a use case for competencies (I have never used them, nor do I really understand their implementation)?

Thanks
Brendon


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In reply to Brendon Hatcher

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Shirley Gregorczyk -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

The current limitations of the competencies and learning plans templates makes it hard to manage business related competencies. I have employees with 150 competencies and it is very challenging to organize and review.

IMHO - I would not use the current competencies and learning plan objects.

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In reply to Shirley Gregorczyk

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Kashyap Kr -
How to solve this or this will be included in future updates..?
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In reply to Kashyap Kr

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by J Guzman -


Hi Kyshap,


I guess staying away from the competencies is your best bet, if you are planning to use moodle for business purposes.  In my case, I did configure mines, using the following plugins:

  • Course Completion (here I can see who has done what and what is still pending)
  • Certificate (My organisation allows me to use a certificate of completion instead of a grade)
  • Profile based Cohorts Membership.  (With this, I can do cohort sync on each course, then configure the users to select the checkbox of the cohort they belongs to, and that will assign the courses they need to take).
  • Ultimately, look for the Moodle for Business (I think that is what is called).  Apparently is a Moodle core, focused into business, not classes like the one we are used to.

Hope it helps.

J.G.

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In reply to J Guzman

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Kashyap Kr -

Many thanks for the response, appreciated. How do you define minimum requirement for set of  competencies for a particular roles & get gap analysis by role when user is enrolled with a particular role.

For example :                                                   

ROLE/COMPETENCY                                                        FRESHER              EXPERIENCED           PROFESSIONAL

EXCEL SKILLS : (COURSE NAME)

                                                                REQUIRED            50%                           70%                               90%

                                                                  ACTUAL             45%                           60%                               75%

                                                                          GAP                5%                            10%                               15%

POWER POINT SKILLS : (COURSE NAME)

                                                                REQUIRED            40%                           60%                               80%

                                                                  ACTUAL             45%                           60%                               75%

                                                                          GAP                NIL                           NIL                                    5%


So how we can achieve the gap.

 Thank You.!

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In reply to Kashyap Kr

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Shirley Gregorczyk -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Looking at the available documentation on Moodle Workplace, which is not yet available, there is no skill gap functionality.

Instructors, could manually Rate with student's skill level for each competency in the current Moodle - but there is no reporting and the Student's Learning Plan view would always display any student that is not achieved Professional status at <100%.

In current Moodle you would have to create three different Learning Plans for each level of expertise. When the student achieves/completes the first, "Fresher" learning plan, the second learning plan is "assigned" to the student. There is no current reporting available for this. A custom solution for Gap reporting would have to consider how many students in each learning plan. each student's individual progress, and organizational needs for students at each skill level. The last consideration normally uses business data outside of the LMS and does model analytics to project where the gaps on.


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In reply to Shirley Gregorczyk

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Kashyap Kr -

Many thanks for the response, appreciated. 

How can I enter the same settings manually with different fields (like activity marks, feedback, letters, percentage etc), and it should show  on the grader report when viewed single or all users reports.

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In reply to Kashyap Kr

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Shirley Gregorczyk -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

grades and competencies are two different methods for evaluating a student.

Normally, a specific grade may award a competency.

Grades - are for: completed activity, feedback that is manually graded by an instructor, an achieved letter grade, or an achieved passing grade of "70%".

If the student achieves the grade for any of those graded options - that can be awarded the competency.

Forklift driver - Skill I requires that the student completes:

  1. The on-line course, with a passing grade of 90%
  2. On-the-job observation with a certified forklift instruction. grade with feedback
  3. 20 hours on with an certified co-worker, another completed activity

When the student has passing values for all requirements they are awarded the competency for Forklift Driver Skill I

There an two more Skill levels, each skill level builds on the other.....more requirements with a corresponding competency for the skill level.

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In reply to Brendon Hatcher

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by J Guzman -

Hello Brendon?


Just out of curiosity, did you end up resolving this using competencies? Ir did you end up doing something different to track the course completion of your users?  I have a similar pitfall and I believe competencies are not the solution as Shirley Gregorczyk suggests, there is a lot of manual input just to create the competency framework thus, complicating the Moodle implementation as you add courses.


J.G.




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In reply to J Guzman

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Shirley Gregorczyk -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Consider that Moodle is based on education. Students are enrolled for a course(s) for a semester. Students do not have to complete annual training to maintain a level of competency, year-to-year. There is a great plug-in for Course Recompletion, (annual retraining), but it does not solve the need to have students (employees) re-qualify (competency) annually. This is a more complex business requirement, not an educational requirement.

Once a student receives a competency, it does not expire. You can delete the competency, but then you have no records that the student (employee) from Forklift Training V1.0 - Forklift Training V5.0 was competent.

Businesses needs to retain and produce records of employee competency over a range of dates. This is difficult challenging in a non-business system.

Always remember, Moodle is education based.

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In reply to Shirley Gregorczyk

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Ralf Hilgenstock -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators

Hi Shirley,


I think it makes sense to have a look on Moodle Workplace distribution that integrates several corporate features like:

  • certificates
  • dynamic rules
  • site wide reporting
  • programs
From my point of view the reporting is a big step forward. Report data are stored outside courses. That means you can delete course grades or courses and the data are available as long a s you need them.

Workplace was announced mid of Februray at Learning Technologies by Moodle HQ and will be distributed from Q3 by Moodle partners.

Ralf
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In reply to Brendon Hatcher

Re: Do I need to use competencies

by Ralf Hilgenstock -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators

Hi Brendon

my idea is to think about badges or certificates instead of competencies.

You can define that a course completion is set by completion of several courses.


Ralf

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