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Attending: Joel Farrell, Chair; James Fiore, Simon Grant, Dan Rehak, Carl Singer, Valerie Smothers
Simon introduced himself, He is from JISC Cetis. He has been helping with the development of leap2a spec for learner owned portfolio information.
Valerie described why she asked Simon to participate in this call. The educational trajectory working group is working to develop a profile of leap 2A that can provide a common format for educational trajectory data that will facilitate a medical students transition to residency and other postgraduate transitions for students of other health professions. That is the near term goal. In the longer term, the educational trajectory will be one part of a lifelong learner profile that would likely include data from the MedBiquitous professional profile. Valerie's question is how to bring the two standards together without breaking the interoperability of either, especially since there are existing systems implementing each.
Simon added that there is quite a bit of overlap between the professional profile and leap 2A. They think of leap 2A fundamentally as learner owned information. In the professional profile, some bits are learner owned and some are not by their very nature. There's a great deal of interest in medical portfolio interoperability in the UK currently. He added that this portfolio should be contrasted with institutional reports which are not learner owned. Such data may be ported into a portfolio.
Valerie talked a little about the leap 2A architecture. Leap 2A leverages atom syndication feed. Each content entry corresponds to an entry in a portfolio, usually an activity. Simon added that the RDF type is used to indicate what sort of entry it is. Atom link is used for general purposes. Joel asked what would be in content. Simon explained that in most cases that would be a description of the activity offered by the learner.
Joel summarized that the link provides documentary support of the activity and clarified that leap does not specify what format the linked document uses. Simon replied that was correct.
Simon commented that would be nice would be having a common conceptual model harmonizing leap 2A in professional profile. You could take a professional profile and transform it to represent in leap 2A using XSLT and vice versa. Once they become more interchangeable it's more of a technicality which way you represent it.
James commented that he liked Simon's idea. He could envision leap 2A as an extensive file for an active medical specialist. A way of summarizing the professional profile data would be a good idea.
Simon reiterated that leap 2A's focus is on learner owned data. If it is an official report, leap 2A would not be so interested in it. Valerie commented that most of professional profile is modeled on official reports and is used in that capacity by those organizations that have implemented it.
Simon commented it is like a CV and a fixed format. He added that they are working on Web services that would bring data together from different systems on demand and get the learner control of the data. Valerie commented that that very much mirrored the direction that MedBiquitous was heading with both the professional profile and the educational trajectory.
James commented that they don't so much want students to present their CV; they want primary source validation of data. It's not enough for student to say what they did. You want to find out what restrictions they have on their license and see something from hospital that says they have done appropriate training.
Simon asked whether the primary data is held by the institution responsible for that activity. James replied that it was. When they are ready to approve an applicant, they collect data from the primary sources.
Simon commented that there was a similar concept in the UK higher education achievement report. It allows you to rake info from a verified source so that the learner can use it in a portfolio. But once the data is in the learner's control, it is no longer primary source verified. They don't try to verify portfolio information. We could put in a link from a portfolio that allows you to verify.
Valerie commented that we are using the same general approach in the working group. She asked Joel moving forward using just leap 2A for educational trajectory data was technically sound. We would keep the professional profile for other use cases which require verified data.
Joel replied that it did seem technically sound. We have a role for leap 2A and a separate role for the professional profile.
Simon commented that his vision is that the educational trajectory can point to a source of primary source verified data.
Dan concluded that we have two different things that seem appropriate. He added that we are evolving two different profiles of the same underlying concept rather than two different specifications.
Simon commented that it's technically simpler if one underlying specification is used in you just choose different pieces of it.
Valerie commented the challenge was doing that was the difference in granularity between the two different approaches. The professional profile uses a much more granular level of detail for describing credentials.
James agreed that there was much less granularity in leap 2A. There are many attributes that the leap 2A spec does not have currently. As a data aggregator, he likes the idea of being able to go to primary sources and get verified data. As a data provider they verify that someone is certified, when they were certified, and what they've done to maintain their certification. The data is easy to collect your generate. Developing the detail is difficult. He asked Simon how leap 2A plans to expand internationally.
Simon commented that it's still early and that they are currently on the lookout for requirements.
Joe summarized that using leap 2A make sense. Initially, leap 2A should be used for learner centric data. We would keep that separate from the institutionally managed data that is in professional profile for now. We may have some work to come up with a consistent data model the future.
Valerie commented that that provided a clear path forward and thanked Joel, Simon, and the rest of the committee.
The next technical steering committee call is March 10.