Daria Elagina, Modelling Vocabulary of Digital Competencies for the Project ENCODE
Channel: Digital Classicist London Seminars
Date: 2021-07-23

Digital Classicist London Seminar (full programme https://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2021.html)
Friday July 23, 2021, 17:00 (UK time/UTC+1)
Daria Elagina (University of Hamburg)
Modelling Vocabulary of Digital Competencies for the Project ENCODE

ENCODE is a three-year Erasmus+ Strategic partnership for higher education, funded by the EU, aimed at bridging the existing gap in the teaching/learning domain of ancient writing cultures between the peculiar humanistic training and the now essential digital competences required for study, research, and employment.

One of the main intellectual outputs of the project is supposed to be shared definitions of digital competences, needed by graduate students in the programmes focusing on written cultural heritage. Since these digital competences are multidimensional and include not only the digital know-how but also a strong component of humanistic qualifications, the vocabulary of digital competences has been built upon two separate frameworks as starting points: DigComp2.0 and CALOHEE (Measuring and Comparing Achievements of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education in Europe).

The vocabulary is modelled using Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) as RDF. Each entity is modelled as skos:Concept, aggregated into a SKOS Concept Scheme, with established semantic relations. The vocabulary allows for representing different dimensions of competences (such as area and level), documents particular examples and dependencies between the competences (which CALOHEE competences are needed for achieving specific digital competences for humanists). The vocabulary allows for standardised definitions of incoming (required) and outcoming (achieved) competences in training/teaching modules. The vocabulary is currently an integrative part of the ENCODE database (https://encode.uni-hamburg.de/) which aggregates information on available modules in digital humanities. Some examples for the vocabulary's development and elaboration are based on the presenter's experience in the study of Ethiopian and Eritrean written artefacts.