Jim Farmer instructional media + magic, inc. Students and Employers: Communicating Competencies HR Open Standards Annual Conference 2016 The Woodlands, Texas 10-11 March 2016 Jim Farmer instructional media + magic, inc.

And now after 15 years, Higher Education is responding to HR Open Standards (then HR-XML Consortium) request for a discussion of competencies and their use by employers.

Definitions Competency: “A learnable, measurable [and/or observable], role-relevant, and behavior-based characteristic or capability of an individual ” Lumina Foundation.2015.Connecting Credentials: A Beta Credentials Framework An ability or skill Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary A competency is commonly described as what an individual “can do.” If an individual can demonstrate a given competency, it means that the individual possesses the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do a certain “job.” American Council on Education.2016.Communicating the value of Competencies or “task.” Competency is more valuable when it is not simply the ability

Why Are Competencies Important Now? U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard Salary is a now a carefully watched institutional metric

Now to support universities’ need for improving employment metrics of graduates, employers can require job application data be provided using HR-Open Standards.

The Players Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sponsor the American Council on Education’s basic research on credentials and competencies. Lumina Foundation is sponsoring a series of pilot projects. These include: Experiential Transcript – Elon University and Loma Linda University Transfer Credit Evaluation – Lexmark eTranscript Credential – University of Maryland, University College UK Joint Information Systems Committee XCRI development and implementations

Benefits for Employers Rejection and Selection of Applications When the volume is large, automation can more accurately determine potential hires. More substantive text for algorithms than resume keywords. Support for Interviewers Create a briefing document identifying relevant course work (subject codes) and experiences supplementing this with catalog course descriptions. Support Talent Search Seek students who have taken a desired “group of courses.” Anthony Carnevale, Georgetown University

Syllabi: what faculty develop “The main syllabus components are (a) course catalog description (course title/number, department, audience, delivery method, units/sessions/hours, topics, goals/objectives, prerequisites, and rationale), (b) expected outcomes (goals and learning objectives), (c) description of content (session-by-session overview of the subject matter), (d) course requirements, (e) course grading system (point-based, if possible), (f) resources/tools available to the participants (textbook, software, hardware, bibliography/webliography), and (g) detailed course schedule (with session dates, specific assignments, and due dates).” From www.unex.ucla.edu/IDP/Pages/faqs.aspx Experiential Transcript – Elon University Experience Transcript – Loma Linda University Transfer Credit Evaluation – Lexmark

The British Are Serving Colleges and universities to provide public information on institutions, programs, and courses online for prospective students, the institutions themselves, and employers. The earliest results show improvements in student satisfaction and engagement, retention, and increased enrollments. “This evolutionary process began with Unistats: “the official website for comparing UK higher education course data.” From https://unistats.direct.gov.uk/ Manchester Metropolitan University was an early adopter. CETIS provides IT expertise. University of Cambridge offers next step.

The HEAR Higher Education Achievement Report (UK) includes 1. Personal information about the student 2. Name of the qualification gained 3. Level of qualification gained. 4. Detailed contents and results gained, mode of student, programme requirements, details of all components of the final mark or grade. 5. Function of the qualification – access to further study and level, and professional status. 6. Additional awards, recognized activities and university, professional and departmental prizes. 7. Formal authentication of the HEAR 8. Weblink reference to a description of the higher education system.

Some IT development suggestions Standards for extended transcripts Implement the XCRI course data exchange using PESC and BSI standards Add discipline codes (BLS SOC, CIP, JACS) for analysis Cliff Adelman: Use experience from “The Diploma Supplement” of the Bologna Process (implemented/implementing by 46 countries) [Coordinate with NAFSA and NACAC] Add “Standard” competencies Lumina Foundation pilots, Gates Foundation basic research [ACE, Georgetown University]

Some Some IT early implementation suggestions Develop standards for data exchange of course and student. Begin with annotated electronic transcripts Instructional program codes [added course data elements to current PESC transcript] Provide online public course catalogs for employers using XCRI/HR-XML API. Automate course description look up for interviewers Support transcript analysis for “groups of courses” Support resume, course description, position description automated analyses

Colleges and universities should Implement employer access via APIs Transcripts and limited HEAR and Diploma supplements with CIP (US) and/or JACS (UK) discipline codes via the XCRI APIs first using national data standards. (PESC transcripts in the US). Online course catalogs using the PESC From the Lumina projects develop XCRI standard data packages, based on PESC standards, for competencies (e.g. University of Maryland University College and Elon University’s learning experiences).

Jim Farmer JXF [at] immagic . com The End Jim Farmer JXF [at] immagic . com

Notes To accommodate additional presentations in the HR New Trends and Projects session only a summary of this presentation was given. Subsequent to the conference slides 12 and 13 were added to document discussions about how the work of colleges and universities on transcripts could be implemented for employers.

References Unistats is a subject indexed course descriptions website with associated qualification, location and study mode. Unistats has been implemented in the UK using the XCRI API. The URL of the website itself is unistats.direct.gov.uk