Specification

The open-ecevet XML schema is a free (under GPL) available technical ECVET specification which is part of the outcomes of the Erasmus + Project Impact.
Currently, this specification is still in an early stage (see here) of development, but it consists of already all of the data types defined in the recommendation.
This schema is not (yet) an official specification, but should contribute to the specification development, facilitate and standardize data collection in future ECVET pilot projects.

The ECVET recommendation was precisely analysed in order to develop a XML schema (technical specification).

The schema:

  • uses the same vocabulary as the recommendation
  • uses the relationships between the data types based on the definitions in Annex 1
  • is fully documented by annotations of the data types linked to the explanations in the recommendation
  • shows considerations on places where the recommendation is ambiguous or out of focus
  • takes into account the official form from ecvet-info.de
  • consists of some data containers which do not 100% cover the recommendation but are useful for the electronic processing or structure

A lot of ECVET pilot projects were found and shortly inspected. More than 30 of these pilot projects were closely analysed. For more than twenty information about their ‘implementation’ of the ECVET framework (including at least something like units of learning outcomes) could be found. These projects have been analysed with reference to their compliance to the ECVET recommendation and the developed XML schema.

The data schema has then been modified in some places to support additional data fields of the evaluated pilot projects. These data types have been annotated accordingly.

The data scheme has been published on github as an open source (GPL) project in order to make it available to a wider group to modify it or to be discussed critically.
The publication is also intended to expand the network to ECVET to accurately determine the needs of the institutions which have used or would like to use ECVET in future. This is an iterative development process between technical specialists and users, which ensures a constant quality control and assurance.

The data schema has been mapped to a relational database to be able to enter the pilot projects into the database in order to test its consistency.

Parallel to developing the scheme an ontology has been initialized, which allows the classification of ECVET data.

This project has the following sections:

  1. Determining a basic XML schema after analysing the recommendation (Annex II – 1 – Units of learning outcomes))
  2. Modification of the schema based on selected pilot projects
  3. Checking the consistency of the model by entering data from pilot projects (current stage)
  4. Extension of the model to the points 2nd-4th in the Recommendation (Annex II)
  5. Internationalization of the model
  6. Development of different ontologies according to the model
  7. Extending the model to show a working process (versioning, translation, design, production mode, MoU)

The development is supported by

Polytechnic Institute of Leiria — http://www.ipleiria.pt/
Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche (ITD) — http://www.itd.cnr.it/
q21.de — http://q21.de

Open technical specification for ECVET Projects