EMPLOYEES’ UPSKILLING THROUGH

SERVICE-ORIENTED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Boris Shishkov

IICREST / TBM – Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, Delft, The Netherlands

Marten van Sinderen

IS – University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, Enschede, The Netherlands

Roberto Cavalcante

Multitel, Rue Pierre et Marie Curie 2, Mons, Belgium

Keywords: Employees’ upskilling, Learning environment, Service-oriented computing.

Abstract: Aiming to increase their competitiveness, many companies are turning to new learning concepts and

strategies that stress collaboration among employees. Both individual learning and organizational learning

should be considered in relation to create a synergetic effect when introducing and maintaining skills among

employees, and as well when it is necessary to train personnel in non-core competences. Regarding such

kind of training, the possibility to collaborate with third parties is advantageous, especially in co-creating

and/or using learning content. In this paper, we propose ICT-related solution directions concerning an

adaptable, flexible, and collaborative upskilling of employees. We consider, in particular, two underlying

objectives, namely adjustability of content+process and collaborative content co-creation. The mentioned

adjustability of content+process is about the specialization of generic content+process, driven by the user

(employee), and it is also about individualism. The mentioned collaborative content co-creation is about a

(cross-border) dynamic creation of content by several persons. Our proposed solution directions (introduced

and motivated in this paper) envision an approach that is used to integrate ideas pointing to some computing

paradigms that concern SOA – Service-Oriented Architecture. It is expected that such an approach can

contribute to the upskilling of employees that is done in an effective and user-friendly way.

1 INTRODUCTION

Competences of personnel as well as the related

skills and their adequate adaptation are important

with regard to the competitiveness of companies.

Hence, aiming to increase their competitiveness,

many companies are turning to new learning

concepts and strategies that stress collaboration

among employees within and beyond organizational

boundaries. Such collaboration concerns individual

learning and organizational learning. They both

should be considered in relation to create a

synergetic effect when introducing and maintaining

skills among employees, and as well when it is

necessary to train personnel in non-core

competences (IBM Global Business Services, 2006).

Regarding such kind of training, the possibility to

collaborate with third parties is advantageous,

especially in co-creating and/or using learning

content. What is nevertheless necessary for this is a

proper integration of both the content (the

knowledge transferred) and the process (the way of

transferring the knowledge).

In the current paper, we propose ICT-related

solution directions concerning an adaptable, flexible,

and collaborative upskilling of employees. We

consider, in particular, two underlying objectives,

namely adjustability of content+process and

collaborative content co-creation. The mentioned

adjustability of content+process is about the

specialization of generic content+process, driven by

the user (employee), and it is also about

505

Shishkov B., van Sinderen M. and Cavalcante R. (2010).

EMPLOYEES’ UPSKILLING THROUGH SERVICE-ORIENTED LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS.

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - Information Systems Analysis and Speciﬁcation, pages

505-509

DOI: 10.5220/0002971505050509

 SciTePress

individualism. An example of the former is the

requirements for different extensions of a knowledge

core, driven by different cultures (concerning

employees); and example of the latter are possible

personality-driven preferences with respect to the

content – one employee would prefer more

explanations, another employee would prefer more

pictures, and so on. The mentioned collaborative

content co-creation is about a (cross-border)

dynamic creation of content by several persons. The

proposed solution directions (introduced and

motivated in this paper) envision an approach that is

used to integrate ideas pointing to some computing

paradigms that concern SOA – Service-Oriented

Architecture (Luthria & Rabhi, 2009). It is expected

that such an approach can contribute to the

upskilling of employees that is done in an effective

and user-friendly way.

The remaining of the current paper is structured

as follows: Section 2 will further delimit and

elaborate the problem, as a basis for Section 3 in

which our proposed solution directions are briefly

outlined. Section 4 discusses then these solution

directions in more detail, following three

perspectives, namely requirements, architecture, and

implementation. Section 5 outlines some further

challenges and discusses related work. Finally,

Section 6 presents the conclusions.

2 PROBLEM ELABORATION

To elaborate further the problem statement, we

introduce our main learning/training-related

perspectives (illustrated in Figure 1).

knowledge core

knowledge additions

knowledge presentation

global drive

local utilization

individualism

Figure 1: Knowledge perspectives.

As the figure suggests:

- There is a ‘global’ drive first of all for

disseminating a knowledge core, pushed either by

Society or by legislation or by the global

management of a distributed company, to just

mention several possibilities.

- There is a ‘local’ utilization (on top of the

global drive) that concerns the way the knowledge is

introduced in a particular societal segment or

organization.

- There is finally a personal issue that concerns

the way the knowledge is actually delivered to a

particular person having his/her own personal

peculiarities.

The knowledge core is (often) of global concern,

the knowledge additions are driven usually by the

need for a local (knowledge) utilization, while the

knowledge presentation is about the way the

knowledge is actually delivered and this should be

driven by individualism – making the user in control

of how (s)he would be learning and or being trained

– with more figures, more examples, less

explanations, for instance.

Each of these knowledge perspectives would

need to be architecturally reflected in a learning

environment, to guarantee that the global, local, and

individual demands will be satisfied.

We claim that this can be possible with service-

oriented solutions that allow for a proper

consideration of the situation of each entity in the

learning/training process. Hence, we would get

inspiration from a computing paradigm, namely

SOA which is not introduced in this paper for the

sake of brevity. We nevertheless refer interested

readers to (Alonso, 2004; Erl, 2007; Papazoglou,

2008).

3 SOLUTION DIRECTIONS

In our furthering previous work (Shishkov & Van

Sinderen, 2009), we will define briefly our proposed

solution directions in this section.

We would base our model on several key

services, considered in the mentioned work, as

exhibited in Figure 2:

Service 4

algorithms

security

engine

access

manager

repository analysis

engine

translation

tool

Service 3 Service 2 Service 1

… … …

…

coordination service

information service

Figure 2: Key services and their relations.

As it is seen from the Figure, a coordination

service is considered and information service as well

as several more services.

The coordination service orchestrates the overall

work of the system, invoking other services at the

right moment and offering them also the right input.

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Hence, this service would need a supporting

information service that takes care of all data

delivered at the right moment to the right entity.

The other services are: Service 1 (Educational

Mediation Service), Service 2 (Educational Broker

Service), Service 3 (Educational User Agent

Service), and Service 4 (Educational Resource

Discovery Service).

Service 1 concerns the delivery of an advise that

is to be helpful for the user, by directing him or her

for adequately making the next steps in his or her

using the learning environment.

Service 2 concerns match-making, for example

between a user and a course or between a content-

creator and a course, which match-making is to be

based on strictly-defined criteria.

Service 3 concerns request processing issues,

such as what is required (by the user), to what

course(s) he or she can qualify, and so on.

Service 4 concerns searching which in tern

concerns users, courses, and so on.

This service model has already been justified in

previous related work as it has been already

mentioned in this section. Hence, for the sake of

brevity, we will not consider the justification of this

model.

This model is however adapted with regard to the

problem considered in this paper (see Section 2) and

to our considered background, namely service-

oriented computing (Section 3).

In the following section, we will go in more

detail, by considering the development of a system

that can implement the introduced service model.

4 DEVELOPMENT

PERSPECTIVES

We will address in this section the development

perspectives concerning the proposed solution

directions, by addressing firstly requirements

perspectives, secondly - architectural perspectives

and finally, implementation perspectives.

Requirements. We start here, by discussing the

most important requirements on the IT environment

from the end-user perspective.

With respect to this, we distinguish between two

main categories of end-users. One category is that of

company employees, who are the consumers of

training and learning material. Experienced and

educated company employees may also act as

producers of training and learning material, and

assume a teacher role to transfer their knowledge to

novices. Furthermore, company employees,

including inexperienced employees, may engage in

collaborative learning, in order to transfer and co-

create knowledge and skills through social

interaction rather than through content media. The

second category is that of company managers, who

set and manage the learning targets in accordance to

the goals of the company. The company goals, in

turn, will depend on the nature of the business and

on market developments, competition and

opportunities. Learning targets may include what,

when and how certain skill/knowledge levels should

be attained. Such targets are set for function

categories rather than for individual employees. In

addition, remuneration policies and other measures

may be agreed upon to stimulate company

employees to engage in training/learning tracks.

The IT environment must be capable of enabling

and facilitating an innovative methodology on how

to conduct education and training of employees of

companies. From this objective, some generic

requirements can be derived from the perspective of

the identified end-user categories:

- It should be possible to mix and match learning

modules offered by different organizations on

geographically distributed nodes using diverse

technologies;

- The mixing and matching is typically prepared

and constrained by a company, by defining

learning profiles, learning paths and learning

policies that are generally useful given the

mission and strategy of (organizational units

within) the company;

- The mixing and matching should be completed

by the employee, such that (s)he can tailor the

learning content, method and plan according to

personal needs and preferences given the

constraints imposed by the company;

- It should be easy to add, remove and update

learning modules, so as to keep pace with

changes in knowledge/skill demands of the

company and to profit from the availability of

new or improved learning modules;

- It should be possible for employees to transfer

their experience and expertise to other employees

by contributing to or co-creating the content of

certain learning modules;

- The delivery of learning content may be

automatically adapted to personal conditions,

such as availability, place and device

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characteristics, using context sensors and context

reasoning;

- A company should have the possibility to be

informed about the learning modules that are

successfully completed by their employees, so as

to compare realized and required knowledge/skill

levels relevant for the business goals of the

company;

- Employees should have the possibility to be

informed about their knowledge/skill level

(based on learning modules successfully

completed), how to improve it, and what

personal opportunities within the company are

created by knowledge/skill improvements.

In addition, the IT environment should support

case-specific requirements on functional and non-

functional aspects, such as:

- Provide learning modules relevant for the

domain or company;

- Provide learning profiles, paths and policies

relevant for the domain or company;

- Provide life-cycle management, monitoring,

control and information extraction mechanisms

relevant for the domain or company;

- Satisfy non-functional properties, such as

response time, availability, reliability, security

and privacy, which are considered relevant for

the domain or company.

Architecture. A definition of a service-oriented

architecture is envisioned, for an employee

upskilling system in which employer and employee

objectives can be flexibly supported and third-party

learning services can be added on demand.

Based on the previously mentioned requirements,

we recognize a few components/tools that play a

crucial role in our architecture:

- Policy-maker: definition and enforcement of

business-constrained learning policies;

- Match-maker: matching employee learning

objectives with (composite) learning services;

- Planning-dashboard: providing overviews and

details on leaning achievements and

opportunities; has two specializations, viz. one

for the employer (business-level) and one for the

employee (individual-level);

- Delivery-dashboard: provides facilities to the

employee to modify previously agreed delivery

of learning services;

- Monitoring-dashboard: provides overviews and

details on the usage and performance of the

system to the employer;

- Orchestrator: controls and coordinates the

execution of service instances for the delivery of

a (composite) learning service, possibly using

information on the context of the employee to

which the service is delivered

These are the basic issues that concern the

architectural perspective with regard to the proposed

solution directions. What has not been discussed in

the current section for the sake of brevity

nevertheless is the platform (with a service-oriented

architecture) that is to flexibly use the introduced

application components together with company-

developed and third party services. This will be

addressed in further related research.

Implementation. Being consistent with the

architectural decisions already mentioned, the

envisioned implementation would be characterized

by the following: (i) User-centric composition. A

user agent that adapts to the knowledge and skill

level of the end-user, and mediates between the end-

user and the composition engine. (ii) Rich service

composition. A composition engine that can cope

with richer services, and apply more criteria beyond

simple input-output matching will be developed. (iii)

Flexible business alignment: the employer will be

able to establish policies at run-time that will adapt

by context-aware methodologies the e-learning

process and content. A policy enforcer agent will

keep business policy alignment up to date. (iv)

Context-aware delivery: based on a broader user

context and from diverse context sources this service

will improve user productivity by delivering

information with a higher probability of relevance

for the user. (v) Collaborative learning: will be

supported by a social-network web tool that will

allow content and knowledge co-creation and

dissemination. (vi) Knowledge asset protection:

information leaking we will minimized by security

measures that will be developed to prevent company

knowledge to be obtained without permission.

And particularly:

• Content Builder.

Once matching is done and all

parts of a specific formation becomes available, this

component will build all course content, avoiding

unwanted side-effect on content delivery due to

eventual unavailability.

• Work Companion Component

. will provide a

time-line control to aid course takers to keep track

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on their formation. Course takers will be able to

come back to a specific point in time and re-make a

specific problem automatically creating a new time-

line branch that will give the opportunity to

experiment new solutions and improve overall score.

• Multimodalities

as new learning tool for present

or distant resources that will help on practical

content simulation.

5 CHALLENGES AND RELATED

WORK

We envision the more in-depth consideration of the

following challenges: (i) Content co-creation

mechanisms require elaboration on how to combine

academic knowledge (justified theoretically but is

sometimes hard to realize in practice) and practical

knowledge (‘working’ in real life but its application

is sometimes not the best solution in long run). (ii)

The control over content updates is a challenge since

the content core which is globally distributed is then

locally adjusted and it remains insufficiently clear

how these updates are restricted from being

inconsistent. (iii) Performance is considered to be

also a challenge because of a required balance

between tools and services – tools would enforce

their ‘embedded’ functionality while (globally

invoked) services would not always comply with it.

Not claiming for exhaustiveness in our challenges

analysis, we are to consider these three challenges in

our further work on the realization of the proposed

in this paper solution directions.

In (Shishkov & Van Sinderen, 2009), we have

considered related work in three directions, namely:

(i) Virtualization of learning (project LiLa (2009)

addresses the challenge of making lab experiments

more widely accessible, through automation and

control via Internet, driven by advanced access

control mechanisms); (ii) Adoption of Service-

Oriented Architecture for enterprise systems in

Education (IMS Global Learning Consortium (2009)

has proposed an actual architecture for education-

related enterprise systems); (iii) Tooling (tools such

as Moodle (2010) are currently undergoing

development that nevertheless strongly depends on

the envisioned upcoming advances in the direction

of service-orientation).

6 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we have presented solution directions

that concern the collaborative, adaptable, and

flexible upskilling of employees, exploiting Service-

Oriented Computing and Context-aware Computing.

In particular, we have proposed a service model

incorporating innovative learning ideas and a vision

on the ICT realization of this model, providing

elaborations on requirements, architecture, and

implementation. We consider this contribution

useful since: (i) it is inspired by consideration of

actual pedagogy (learning) problems; (ii) it

envisions IT solutions that are based on established

and proven paradigms; (iii) it concerns a solution

that has been justified with regard to architecture

and implementation (though not yet exemplified).

We would further this work as follows: (i)

strengthening the pedagogy-related background

through consideration of exploratory case studies;

(ii) extension and detailing of the service model; (iii)

further development of the architecture; (iv)

considerations of the platform perspective; (v)

validation through prototype implementation.

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