Learner competencies

It is fair to say that Moodle started life as a straightforward VLE--basically an online platform where learning takes place and not much beyond that. It is true that one could evidence learning through quizzes, workshops, assignments, and lessons, but that only goes so far; you are simply testing a learner's knowledge. Through the introduction of competency-based education (CBE), Moodle is now much more of a learning management system (LMS) than in previous versions (in spite of the earlier introduction of learning objectives). In other words, not only a platform where learning takes place, but also where learning is managed.

Learning isn't just about gaining knowledge. The instructional designers we are developing for won't want their students to simply regurgitate facts. They will also want them to be able to exhibit competency--or proficiency--when carrying out tasks. What influence will this approach have on the platform?

For example, most of us are aware that making a decent cup of coffee requires hot water, ground coffee beans, and perhaps milk and sugar to suit your taste. But there is a world of difference between knowing that a cup of coffee requires these ingredients and being proficient at making one. And, continuing from that, would students be capable of discerning decisions on, for example, choices of ingredients--from perhaps choosing to use Fairtrade Foundation coffee (http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/) or organic milk and sugar? You can very quickly see that even something as seemingly simple as assessing students on the ability to make coffee can require quite a complex framework of skills against which a student can be judged. This is what we might refer to as the Coffee Maker's Competency Framework.

Competency frameworks are very often found in work-based learning. For example, workers in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) are typically required to demonstrate a basic level of competency defined in the Core Skills Training Framework (http://www.skillsforhealth.org.uk/services/item/146-core-skills-training-framework). Clearly having a competent (or otherwise) healthcare worker could potentially be a matter of life or death, and this does make the Coffee Maker's Competency Framework seem rather trivial, but the principle is the same.

More recent versions of Moodle allow us to create competency based frameworks--see https://docs.moodle.org/31/en/Competencies for details. If we need to import competency frameworks into Moodle from an external source (for example, the Core Skills Training Framework mentioned earlier) then this can be achieved through developing a plugin. Check out the Moodle plugins directory for third-party competency framework plugins (https://moodle.org/plugins/index.php?q=competency%20framework). Fortunately, there is an API that allows us to manage competencies and the evidence to support them--see https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Competency_API for details.

Plugins to support site configuration--that is, of the type that would be used by site administrators, such as a plugin to import learner competencies--are to be found under admin/tool:

Having now got to grips with how we might develop custom plugins to manage users, let's take a look at how we can begin to manage the spaces in which learning takes place: courses. Managing courses is the subject of the next section.