In Salzburg for a couple of very enjoyable days. Of particular interest me was the discussion around the presentation by Sebastien Fielder and Terje Väljataga in their paper “Competence advancement supported by social media”.

Two aspects in particular:

1. The discussion around the meaning of the word competence – always a thorny one as it carries so much baggage and means quite different things for different people, cultures and contexts. As pointed out by Sebastien and Väljataga’s paper:

“In general what used to be emphasized was the role of well trained, standardized, and largely
automated procedural skills and of factual knowledge for successful problem solving and coping.”

however a contemporary explanation might be…

“A competent actor is thus understood as an individual who has acquired factual knowledge and a set of procedural skills in a certain area, but in addition also holds orientations, values and attitudes for coping with open-ended and complex problem situations”

2. The discussion around the terms ‘self-organised vs self-directed learning’. This has puzzled me for a while and two explanations seem plausible to me. The first is that self-directed is a subset of self-organised. The second, explained by Sebastien, is that self-directed is most usefully applied to formal learning where there is pre-determined end point whereas self-organised is best used in non-formal contexts.

Below: self-organised eating for eight month old Lily :^)