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Procedia Computer Science 35 (2014) 570 – 579

18th International Conference on Knowledge-Based and Intelligent

Information & Engineering Systems - KES2014

Extending Moodle functionalities with ontology-based

competency management
Kalthoum Rezgui*, Hédia Mhiri, Khaled Ghédira
SOIE, Higher Institute of Management, University of Tunis, 41 rue de la Liberté, Cité Bouchoucha 2000 Le Bardo,Tunis , Tunisie

Abstract

The Learning Management System (LMS) Moodle is currently the most popular software solution which provides many
modules for various teaching and learning purposes. However, several aspects relevant for competency management are
typically missing in Moodle. This paper proposes an ontology-based competency management application which is
developed as a Moodle extension for supporting the development and assessment of competencies inside a course. Details
about the competency ontology adopted for designing the competency-based course structure as well as the competency
management features embedded into Moodle are presented. By incorporating these features into a LMS, it becomes possible
to manage target competencies together with their associated evidence items and assess proficiency levels reached by
students for each target competency. In addition, it becomes possible to generate different types of competency reports
depending on the target role (teachers, students or administrators).
©
© 2014
2014 The Authors.
Published byPublished by Elsevier
Elsevier B.V. This isB.V.
an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of KES International.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of KES International.
Keywords: Competencies; competency management; competency ontology; Moodle.

1. Introduction

In Learning Management Systems (LMSs), a competency management tool is required for different types of
competency-based learning support, such as competency-based learning program design1,2,3 and competency-
based learning resource retrieval4,5. Besides, it helps identify individual competency gaps and direct

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: kalthoum.rezgui@isg.rnu.tn

1877-0509 © 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of KES International.
doi:10.1016/j.procs.2014.08.138
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personalized navigation in the Web-based learning environment which allows learners move expeditiously
towards their goals. In this paper, we propose to extend the functionalities of the LMS Moodle (Modular
Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment)6 by developing an ontology-based application for supporting
competency assessment and development.
We chose Moodle because it is provided freely and currently it’s the most popular e-Learning platform with
over 85,000 registered sites worldwide, over 8 million courses, almost 76 million students, and over one
million teachers7. Besides, its open source nature and modular design allows developers to integrate external
applications which may be needed to support specific functionalities. From the functional point of view,
Moodle provides many modules for various teaching and learning activities, such as the assignment module,
resource module, quiz module, and discussions forums. However, several aspects relevant for competency
management are typically missing in Moodle. Actually, the Moodle system is missing a mechanism that allows
teachers to: (i) manage target competency profiles associated with domain knowledge models defining content
for the courses they are teaching and (ii) assess the acquisition of these profiles by their students based on
evidences presented by these latters or captured during the performance of assessment activities/tasks. Besides,
it lacks the functionality that enables students to view their actual competency proficiency levels. For these
reasons, the functionalities of Moodle as a LMS needs to be extended so that it can provide a practical way to
manage and assess competencies. In fact, by integrating a competency management application into Moodle, it
becomes possible for teachers to manage target competencies for a course along with their associated evidence
items and to keep track of students' progress on each target competency. Moreover, it becomes possible to
generate different types of competency reports depending on the target role. The proposed application relies on
a Competency ontology that we have developed to enable formal and semantic representation of competency
definitions and their relationships. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: First, a brief description
of the adopted competency ontology is presented. Next, details about the competency management features
embedded into the Moodle platform are presented. The Entity-Relationship model showing the new tables
added to the existing Moodle database schema is also presented in this part. Finally, suggestions for future
works are outlined in the concluding part of this paper.

2. Overview of the competency ontology

The competency management extension we propose is based on a Competency Ontology which has been
developed in the OWL8 to formalize the concepts of competency, competency evidence, and competency
profile. The following figure (Fig. 1.) illustrates a graphical representation of the developed competency
ontology. This ontology results from the analysis of different approaches to competency modeling and
management described in the literature, such as those proposed by5,9-19.
In this ontology, the Competency class is related to: (i) a skill selected from a learning-domain skills
taxonomy/ontology, (ii) a knowledge drawn from a learning-domain ontology, (iii) a context selected from a
domain ontology, and (iv) the ProficiencyLevel class that enables to describe the actual proficiency level. The
proposed ontology also enables formal representation of diverse kinds of dependency relationships between
competencies, such as requires, similarTo, isComposedOf. In addition, for each student, this ontology makes it
possible to keep track of competency estimates (CompetencyRecord) and their associated EvidenceRecords.
The CompetencyProfile class enables formal representation of collections of acquired or required competencies
known as competency profiles. A competency profile describes a set of competencies together with associated
proficiency levels.
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http://www.lambdasolutions.net/blog/2013/01/moodle-market-share-statistics-show-its-the-market-leader/
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2004. p. 67–92.
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http://www.imsglobal.org/competencies/
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