This presentation discusses our approach to competence development where learners can have on-demand access to competences by taking part in a currency-free competence exchange scheme. The idea here is to integrate competence management features within a collaborative social media platform. Our approach consists in providing new incentives to learners by making them aware that their own competences can be useful for others and vice-versa. Learners can thus turn into timely providers of their own skills by giving coaching sessions in exchange of reusable credits. Our goal is to go beyond spontaneous assistance between peer learners and to foster the emergence of self-driven communities of competence exchanges. To achieve this, we extended Graaasp, an Opensocial-based container that allows users to organize their collaborative work through web spaces and supports context-aware recommendations. Thanks to this tool and our extension, learners can make discoverable or find competences, arrange informal teaching sessions and get reusable credits in return, all this in a continuous and context-centered environment.
3. anewapproachfor
Agilecompetencedevelopment
❚ make learners realize they too have
competences useful for others
❚ in an agile & pervasive way because:
▯anchored in context through the notion of web
space
▯based on widget technology accessible from
mobile terminals
▯set in an informal flow of action (social media
platform, tagging)
5. Inspiration
❚ LETS : Local Exchange and Trading
Scheme
▯multilateral exchange of services:
A helps B who helps C, etc.
▯organized in local communities
▯created in the 80's and still active!
6. ACompetence Bartering Platform
❚ allowing Competence advertising and searching
among peers
❚ competence providers give coaching sessions ...
❚ .. and get reusable credits in return = Multi-
lateral Bartering
11. Social media platform + collaboration
through space with graaasp.epfl.ch
http://www.slideshare.net/jianjinshu/using-social-software-for-teamwork-and-collaborative-project-management-in-higher-educationna-li
12. "web space" =
• People + Resources + tools
• bundled for a given purpose (course, project, etc.)
=> space materialize contexts
13. Targeted technical contribution
Extend current SocialPlatform / Learning tools w/:
❚ lightweight competence management
❚ user search and recommendation based on
competence
❚ multilateral trade
Competence Bartering Platform
16. Example : "John is Level 4 (/8) in Algebra"
▪ theory. + factual knowledge in a broad context
▪ skills to generate sol. to specific pb
▪ self-management in study context subject to
change + responsibility for evaluation and
improvement
standard scale for
competences...
18. ▯pluggable in any OpenSocial compatible env.
=> fully portable to mobile terminals
▯incentive by providing simplified Europass CV
editor and get competence data in return
▯compatible with growing standard Europass (10M
CV generated)
CV Builder widget
20. see and try at
http://www.role-widgetstore.eu/tool/europass-cv-builder
http://graaasp.epfl.ch/#item=widget_1177
Seamless competencemanagement
withCV Builder
21. ❚ Competences globally available for
▯search
▯recommandation in context (web spaces)
search / recommendpeople's
competences
22. Coaching sessions
When sought-for competence is found, trading peers can
arrange a meeting, exchange resources, etc through:
graasp.epfl.ch
+ Communication widgets
(e.g FlashMeeting, Chat, Google docs widgets,
etc. see ROLE Widget store:
(http://www.role-
widgetstore.eu/tools/Collaborate%20%2526%20Com
municate)
23. decentralized
credit model
❚ Coaches get community currency credits in return
(fixed hourly-based rate or freely agreed, depending on chosen policy and
results of evaluations in ROLE testbeds)
❚ transactions are supported by a decentralized
peer-2-peer credit network (each member grant credit) for ..
▯robustness over central (possibly faulty) structure
▯cross-communities transfer
❚ Implementation based on Ripple-project.org
model
25. conclusion
GOAL:
extend social container to foster self-directed
learning,
build communities of mutual coaching exchanges
fueled by decentralized community currency
26. conclusion
ROLE Competence Bartering Platform features:
❚ Competence management:
▯extend OpenSocial container (shindig)
▯low-barrier entry (CV Builder)
▯exploit search & recommendation mechanisms
❚ trade & coaching with remote work and
communication widgets
❚ credit system based on p2p Ripple system
27. Thanks for your attention !
Questions to :
denis.gillet@epfl.ch
freddy.limpens@epfl.ch
30. decentralizedcredit model
cold-start : use intermediary third party nodes
before trust is developed enough
trusted authority
trusted authority
trusted authority
trusted authority
step 1:
no mutual trust
step 2:
+&+ transactions bypass
central nodes
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39. Typical scenario
1. Tom starts a Master in Web Development
2. First project =>Tom needs an update on Ruby
3. Tom discovers the Competence Bartering
Platform (CBP):
1. CV Editor widget
2. search "ruby" and find Alice
3. Alice coachTom in ruby
4. Tom pays Alice with ECU (Educational Credit Unit
Learners can also be seen as competence providers themselves
Formal competence dev. is needed but sometimes not agile enough.
Informal exchanges are neither recorded nor formally encouraged and remain within the limits of small acquaintance groups.
LETS (Local Exchange and Trading Systems [5]): communities where members can trade skills, in the form of services, in a multilateral way and in exchange of credit units
proficiency to choose from 8 levels (begin, intermediate, advanced, expert)
under development
Under development
ECU as a community currency, BUT how do we ensure DURABILITY ?
credit networks (=decentralized currencies) offer an alternative to centraly maintained currencies (be they community or national currencies)
Explanation of credit Network from Arpita Ghosh et al., Mechanism Design on Trust Networks
<< Currencies can in fact operate as abstract IOUs ("I Owe YOU"), or obligations.
(examples :) Modern currencies are issued in the form of abstract obligations to provide value of some form, be it banks’ obligations to redeem account balances for government notes, governments’ obligations to redeem those notes as credit toward taxes due, or e-gold’s obligations to store gold in trust for account holders.
A decision to accept a certain currency1 is a decision to trust the issuer to fulfill its obligations.
ex: From this perspective, a loan repayment agreement is currency issued by the borrower and accepted by the lender.
Payment is the transfer of obligations from one entity, the payer, to another, the recipient, in a form the recipient will accept. In other words, to make payment, the payer must present obligations from a currency issuer that is trusted by the recipient. The payer is faced with the problem of how to route the payment: how to convert obligations that it holds or can readily obtain (for example, via a line of credit) into obligations from an issuer that the recipient considers trustworthy. This routing takes place in a trust network.
The most ubiquitous routable financial trust network is the banking system. At the national level this is essentially a tree, with the central bank at the root, regular banks as children of the central bank, and bank customers as the leaves. This arrangement makes it feasible to route payments manually, since there is only one path between any two nodes in a tree.>>
proficiency to choose from 4 levels (begin, intermediate, advanced, expert)