Wikidata:Property proposal/competency

competency

This property was requested after extensive consultation with the Wikidata community and experts on ed tech, OER, global and national curriculum, education policy, and digitization. Over the two rounds of the consultation, we received input from 31 individuals representing various global perspectives and areas of expertise to aid in the full implementation of the Wikidata for Education project.

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Not done

Description	States the competencies one needs to acquire after taking up a course or class or a lesson
Data type	Item
Domain	property in education (Q8434)
Example 1	Critical thinking (Q113465749) → Science Curriculum for Basic 7 (Q113646657) competency Critical thinking (Q113465749) edit 0 references add reference add value
Example 2	Mathematics Curriculum for Basic 7 (Q113556827)CompetencyCritical thinking (Q113465749); When a student finishes his/her studies in Mathematics Curriculum for Basic 7, s/he is suppose to have developed a competency called Critical thinking
Example 3	English Language Curriculum for Basic 7 (Q115800033)CompetencyCreativity (Q113465748); When a student finishes his/her studies in English Language Curriculum for Basic 7, s/he is suppose to have developed a competency called Creativity
Planned use	A reference to the expected competency. Read more about the data model WD4E Data Model. Check out How it is used in the test environment Q223773.
Wikidata project	Wikidata for Education

Motivation

After studying any course or programme, learners are expected to gain or acquire certain skills. Some of these skills include critical thinking,problem solving become critical thinkers, problem solvers, creators, innovators, good communicators, collaborators, digitally literate, and culturally and globally sensitive citizens. In the example above, competencies that learners are expected to acquire in a course such as journalism will be critical thinking (that is, improving their critical thinking skills). A student after studying a Socio-economic Development (Q113463655) course (Sub-Strand) should have acquired a problem solving competence (relative) and another student studying Family Life (Q113463652) is supposed to come out of that course (Sub-Strand) with Personal Development (Q113465751). Dnshitobu (talk) 09:26, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

• @Andrews Lartey: You have proposed many properties recently but in none of them so far are the examples demonstrated properly. For this one, for example, you should find an existing Wikidata item (or propose a new one) that is the subject for each example - presumably it should be some sort of curriculum item since that is what you have been describing. With a clearer illustration it will be possible for others to evaluate your proposals, otherwise it is very unclear what you are trying to do here. ArthurPSmith (talk) 16:59, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you for this feedback. I am working on it and I should be done with them soon. Your feedbacks are really helping me here. Andrews Lartey (talk) 17:01, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

•  Comment the description for this should be more specific / clearer. This meaning of the term has nothing to do with competence (Q5156288) for example. --Middle river exports (talk) 21:00, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

  This has been worked on, you can take a look @Middle river exports Dnshitobu (talk) 15:13, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

•  Oppose. I don't get this. It doesn't make sense to me. Thierry Caro (talk) 13:32, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

  Hi @Thierry Caro, have you checked the example we have provided at Test Wikidata (Q223773) for this property? In curriculum, a course teaches different competencies to students. When we studied Ghana's curriculum, we found different competencies that are part of the curriculum. Also, please let us know what more information you require, we are here to make improvement and also learn from you. SPatnaik (WMF) (talk) 17:10, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Thierry Caro, I can understand the confusion with the generic example it had before, WiR for this project @Dnshitobu has recently added items that are relevant to the project. I have made some changes to the example, referring to Ghana's National curriculum for B7 Social Studies. I hope the examples are clear now. SPatnaik (WMF) (talk) 22:10, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

  @Thierry Caro I am checking up on you if the updated examples are clear for your understanding or if you still have new queries. Dnshitobu (talk) 09:29, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  I guess it's clearer this way but I'm still not convinced by the overall idea behind the proposal. I doubt, for instance, that there is much meaning in having items such as Creativity (Q113465748). They sound made up out of thin air. I maintain my vote against. Thierry Caro (talk) 09:35, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

  @Thierry CaroYou can read more from the Mathematics B1-B3 curriculum of Ghana on page VI and VII. You can get its correlation with the other aspect of the curriculum on page 2 a more detailed approach on page 24, on the third column titled Core Competencies/Subject Specific Practices. Please let us know if you still have challenges Dnshitobu (talk) 11:49, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

•  Comment Could has effect (P1542) be used instead? Abbe98 (talk) 14:46, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
•  Comment If I understand the proposed property correctly, then I think that "learning outcome" would be a better name. The name "competency" could be mistaken to mean the level of competency (e.g., "highly competent") instead of the skills or knowledge that are expected to be acquired during a course of study. Also, what are the classes of items does it apply to? (Classes? Curriculums? Or something else?) Would this property be used to indicate that a person is competent in a particular skill? — The Erinaceous One 🦔 04:21, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

  @The-erinaceous-one Thank you for the comments. You have raised genuine concerns but this property is will be used to measure a skill(s) a student gets or is expected to get after studying a particular concept or unit in a curriculum. For example, a student who sits for a lesson for Family Life (Q113463652) is expected to develop Personal Development (Q113465751) according to the Ghanaian curriculum. However, each curriculum comes with a unique set of skills henceforth known as Competency to be achieved for each subject. The term "learning outcome" might even be mistaken as learning objectives or learning goals.

  The Competency property will be used for classes, curriculums and units in a curriculum Dnshitobu (talk) 22:40, 27 September 2022 (UTC)

  How is the proposed property different from learning objectives? They sound the same to me, but "learning objectives" (or "learning goals") would be a better a better label because (1) it indicates that a given item is the desired outcome of a class than a guaranteed outcome and (2) it is less prone to being misunderstood. — The Erinaceous One 🦔 00:21, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

  The Erinaceous One 🦔 We have made plans to change the name to learning outcomes. Would it be appropriate to rename this property as such or we have to create a new request? You recommendation is really valuable here. Dnshitobu (talk) 17:07, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

•  Oppose Weak oppose because the intent is good but the name and definition don't seem right. A competency is a thing, it can be defined, say in a curriculum or a competency framework for a profession. A course can then teach that competency, an exam can assess that competency, a job or a qualification may require that competency. So, how does a curriculum relate to a competency? The current model suggests that the curriculum defines a course that teaches the competency; however, I think it might be just as valid to say that the curriculum defines the competency. --Philbarker (talk) 15:17, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
•  Comment We appreciate the efforts and the time you spent reviewing the proposed properties. We are reviewing all your comments and some collated pieces of advice and would update the proposals soon and reply accordingly to all question. Dnshitobu (talk) 16:10, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
•  Comment @Abbe98: I think has effect (P1542) doesn’t full capture the semantics of what this proposed property is meant to express: That the ‘effect’ is specifically in the ‘attendant’/‘patient’ of the subject (the course or program) of statements using this proposed property. However, we might consider making this proposed property subproperty of (P1647) of has effect (P1542). ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 10:20, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
•  Comment Looking at this and Dnshitobu (talk • contribs • logs)’s other recent property proposals together with the “WD4E Data Model 2022”, a couple issues stand out to me in particular:
  ➊ The terminology may be too closely aligned with the Ghanaian style guide for curricula to generalize as well as the proposed generic labels for the properties suggest (e.g., “competency”). There is nothing wrong with modeling Ghanaian curricula in particular, but if properties are to be created to support that effort specifically (as suggested by the fact that similar labels don’t seem to fit), they should be labeled as such.
  ➋ The terminology in the “WD4E Data Model 2022” and in this and related property proposals seems unclear and inconsistent. Terms are sometimes used both as labels for classes and for attributes (properties) of those same classes (e.g., “local education level” here). This makes it difficult to discern the intended semantics.
  ➌ Many of the examples given in this and related property proposals seem inconsistent with the intended data model. This may be because the contributors working on the proposals tried to find existing items with which to showcase the proposed properties, but those items may not quite be what the proposed properties would actually be used with eventually. If that is the case I would suggest creating new items or inventing mock labels for the property-use examples as needed.
  ➍ The direction of the intended main classification relations in the “WD4E Data Model 2022” is counter the usual Wikidata convention: in Wikidata, it is typically the more specific items that point to the less specific items: something like Douglas Adams (Q42)part of (P361)humanity (Q1156970), but not humanity (Q1156970)has part(s) (P527)Douglas Adams (Q42). Following this convention may make the data model both more palatable to reviewing experienced Wikidatans and easier to use in the long run.
  ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 10:20, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

  @BlaueBlüte Thank you for the detailed observations. We will discuss it and better up going forward. Dnshitobu (talk) 22:55, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

•  Strong oppose this makes no sense. I feel like I'm going mad... BrokenSegue (talk) 00:24, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

  @Lectrician1, @BrokenSegue, @ChristianKl, @ArthurPSmith We are very happy you have spent sometime reviewing this property request, a few changes have been made to it and we would be happy if you could take a look, comment or recommend on best practices so that we get this done and we all can move on. Thank you for your support all this while. As for the Strong Support comments, we made a presentation at a forum about how we are making efforts to digitize curriculum data on Wikidata and asked for their support in reviewing the proposal and for whatever reasons best known to them (We believe it was out of excitement), they came to give all our proposals strong support. Dnshitobu (talk) 11:49, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

   Oppose One of the big problems is that you only think about your single use case and not about Wikidata as a whole when you make those property proposals. It sounds like you decided on a data model with people without Wikidata experience.

  Going forward, it might be best to either sit down and create a data model together with experienced Wikidata editors go to just use your own Wikibase instance if you want your own custom data model. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 12:21, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you for bringing this to my attention and thank you for spending time reviewing our proposals. This is a pilot project and we are looking at how Wikidata can handle school curricula from different countries by its linked data structure. I apologize for my mistake in the last update. In fact, I was supposed to do it off Wikidata, ask for validation from my team before publishing it here. That was my bad and I don’t think this would happen again. In the interim, we have moved the property to draft to fix the necessary issues with the property and once we are done with all relevant changes, we will keep you posted on that. I appreciate your feedback and will take it into account going forward.

  Please have look at the following queries:

  Five uploaded curricula data

  Science Curriculum data on Listeria

  Social Studies curriculum for Basic 7 Dnshitobu (talk) 16:56, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

 Oppose Example 1 makes the opposite relationship that examples 2 and 3 do. Which way are you proposing? Please fix the examples. Lectrician1 (talk) 12:34, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Lectrician1 Thank you sir, It will be fixed Dnshitobu (talk) 16:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

• @Lectrician1, BlaueBlüte, Dnshitobu, BrokenSegue, Philbarker:@ArthurPSmith, SPatnaik (WMF), Andrews Lartey, Thierry Caro, Abbe98, The-erinaceous-one:  Not done this data model got only oppose votes. If a new data model is thought out a new proposal could be made. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 23:30, 20 April 2024 (UTC)