Abstract:

In the last two decades, the most notable step forward in education was a shift in comprehensive treatment of teaching and learning. Many mechanisms have been developed and integrated into global and national educational structures, organization and processes, for different educational levels and for formal and informal learning. Competence based breakdown is one of such mechanisms that together with other mechanisms offers improvement of education. Steps forward were made also in treating the labour market such as organizing different work areas and professions in this areas and making list of related qualifications. The European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and National Qualifications Networks (NQFs) mechanisms that encapsulate qualifications of individuals, for all types of education, training and qualifications, from school education to academic, professional and vocational, for better recognizing and comparison of the qualities of individuals have been established. Lifelong learning and vocational education and training are encouraged.

Preparing EQF and NQF based profession profiles and related sets of competencies (knowledge, skills, other/wider competencies) is still ongoing process. Different organizations are preparing necessary descriptions, and similar is for many European Commission founded projects treating specific work areas. The Leonardo da VINCI TOI Project STRENGTH (Structuring of Work Related Competences in Chemical Engineering), 2013-1-ES1-LEO05-66726, is in similar fashion preparing profession profiles for chemical engineering. The project launches innovative and coherent model for qualification description in knowledge intensive chemical engineering sector with high green employment potential. The main aim of the project is focused on cooperation between vocational education and training for and the world of work and foresees transferring and upgrading of VQTS-PH project outcomes through elaboration of e-tool based on EQF principles. Difference in relation to other projects is in development of intelligent tool for qualification description called “competence profiler and advisor” - CPA. The main aim of the tool is in multilingual structural treating of different professions and related competence sets and in an advisory functionality. For individuals that seek new lifelong learning opportunities, new occupation, or new entrepreneurship opportunities and would like to know what qualification they need to additionally achieve, or which profession is the nearest to them in sense of least missing qualifications, the tool is providing all necessary information and functionality of competence self-assessment.

The paper is divided into following sections. After introduction, the EQF and project STRENGTH are briefly described. In the third (main) section, intelligent tool CPA is presented, its functionality, use cases and potential of broad usage for any possible profession.

Keywords:

Qualification description, eqf, profession profile, competence, skill, competence profiler, job profiler, e-tool.