Creating competence: perspectives and practices in organizations

Creating competence has become a major issue in organizations. Various authors contend that competency management has the potential of integrating organizational strategy, human-resource instruments, and human-resource development; that competency development can lead to performance improvement; and that it can help Human Resource Development (HRD) professionals in aligning their practices to the needs of the changing organization. A study was designed with four objectives. The first objective was to analyze the concept of competence, seeing what definitions are brought forward and how the concept is perceived in practice. The second objective was to evaluate the dissemination of the concept. The third objective was to evaluate the potential of competency development for vertical integration, and for HRD programs and practices. The fourth objective was to analyze the contribution of the concept of competency development for the HRD profession. Data collection for the study involved telephone interviews with 80 for-profit and nonprofit organizations, 35 telephone interviews with directors of Human Resource Management (HRM) in large organizations, and questionnaire responses from 130 HRD managers. Finally, an analysis was undertaken of the critical views of organizations that have introduced competency development systems. Based on the findings, recommendations are given for other organizations that want to introduce competency development systems

Approving job profiles for curriculum profiles in health care programs : a study on process and product quality

A study evaluated the approach used for validation of job profiles for curriculum development in three health care programs in the Netherlands: dietetics, podotherapy, and activity therapy. It also evaluated the quality of these job profiles and the relation between process and product quality. The validation approach used was a practical application of a small group strategy that consisted of three parts: information, deliberation, and consensus. Data were used from three cases. In these cases, 12, 10, and 11 persons with health care institutions or educational institutions were present. Six questionnaires collected data on the following: (1) personal characteristics, motives and expectations, the information document, and the draft job profile; (2) opinions on issues and expected consensus; (3) communication rules; (4) the decision-making process; (5) consensus on components of and opinions on the quality of the validated job profile; and (6) evaluation of the validation approach. Findings indicated that the validation approach was satisfying. Although there was a considerable amount of prior agreement with the draft job profile components, the validation sessions created an even greater agreement with the final job profile components. The validation approach was also satisfying with regard to product quality. The process quality was scored less positively. The study showed that process and product quality were significantly related

Production of Milky Way structure by the Magellanic Clouds

Previous attempts at disturbing the galactic disk by the Magellanic Clouds relied on direct tidal forcing. However, by allowing the halo to actively respond rather than remain a rigid contributor to the rotation curve, the Clouds may produce a wake in the halo which then distorts the disk. Recent work reported here suggests that the Magellanic Clouds use this mechanism to produce disk distortions sufficient to account for both the radial location, position angle and sign of the HI warp and observed anomalies in stellar kinematics towards the galactic anticenter and LSR motion.Comment: 8 pages, uuencoded compressed PostScript, no figures, html version with figures and mpeg simulations available at http://www-astro.phast.umass.edu/Preprints/martin/martin1/lmc_online.htm

Validating clusterings of gene expression data

We propose a measure for the validation of clusterings of gene expression data. This measure also useful to estimate missing gene expression levels, based the similarity information contained in a given clustering. It is shown that this measure is an improvement over the figure of merit, an existing validation measure especially developed for clusterings of gene expression data

Evaluating competence-based vocational education in Indonesia

This paper investigates the realisation of competence-based education (CBE) in vocational education in Indonesia. It examines the extent to which CBE design principles of the Comprehensive Competence-Based Education Framework developed in a Western context exist in Indonesian policy documents and school practices. This study reviews educational policy documents and collects cross-sectional survey data from 41 school principals, 453 teachers, and 2219 students from 41 agricultural vocational schools in five provinces of Java, Indonesia. Results showed that the ten CCBE principles listed in the framework exist to large extent in Indonesian policy documents. School principals, teachers, and students noticed the realisation of CCBE principles in the study programme to differing degrees, except for the principle of flexibility that was largely absent. The level of CBE implementation varied, from the level of starting competence-based to that of largely competence-based education. The findings contribute to the discussion of CCBE design principles and lesson learned of CBE implementation in a non-western perspective.</p

Utilization of design principles for hybrid learning configurations by interprofessional design teams

Educational design research yields design knowledge, often in the form of design principles or guidelines that provide the rationale or ‘know-why’ for the design of educational interventions. As such, design principles can be utilized by designers in contexts other than the research context in which they were generated. Although research has shown that quality support is important for design success, less is known about processes that promote utilization of design principles as the rationale for instructional design. In this study we therefore explored an intervention for promoting the utilization of a set of research-based design principles in educational practice. This intervention aimed to promote utilization through enhancing perceived usefulness of the design principles by design teams in various contexts. The set of design principles that was utilized by the design teams in this study underpins the design of so-called hybrid learning configurations that are situated at the interface between school and workplace. The intervention was developed from the perspective of boundary crossing theory and was conducted with four different design teams. It was evaluated by way of a questionnaire and a dialogue with members of the design teams. This boundary crossing intervention appeared to bring about the desired outcomes. Most of the design team members considered the set of design principles useful in several different ways and they expected that utilization of the principles would lead to an improved learning configuration.</p

Quantum description of the orientational degrees of freedom in a biaxial nematic liquid

The quantum mechanical version of a classical model for studying the orientational degrees of freedom corresponding to a nematic liquid composed of biaxial molecules is presented. The effective degrees of freedom are described by operators carrying an SU(3) representation, which allows the explicit calculation of the partition function in the mean field approximation. The algebraic consistency conditions are solved numerically and the equilibrium phases of the system are determined. In particular, the entropy, the specific heat and the order parameters are presented for different choices of the constituent biaxial molecules. Our results reproduce the classical calculation in the limit of high temperatures and high quantum numbers.Comment: 33 pages, Latex, 11 figure