Abstract:

The Digital (digital systems and technologies, such as ICT, Internet, Semantic Web, Big Data, machine learning, mobile systems, robotics), is not only helping to overcome current problems but also shapes the future employment market. New skills and knowledge are required. The reconfigurability and management of the available education resources become important to assure sustainability and resilience of the education service.

In this paper we address innovation activities in a TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) service system. In this perspective, the rapid evolvement of technology and the unexpected circumstances constantly change the education context, in a multi-contextual perspective [1].

This paper introduces a proposal for collaborative smart service development for TVET, involving actors' creative and motivational application of competences through services as a service innovation mechanism. We are using a service system-related ontology to classify education resources. Then, we apply semantic reasoning to reveal new operant resources (combinations of knowledge and skills) to create new education activities. We have directed the main focus on managing activities, skills, and knowledge, to enhance the ability of reorganizing and reconfiguring available education resources, to overcome and mitigate the risk caused by unexpected, disrupting events, like the current pandemic that has affected every sector of the society.

Our ontology, created using the Protege software, classifies service system elements and decomposes the service into actions and flows. We have adapted the Organize diamond from the four diamonds-of-context model for complex service design (4DocMod) framework [2] to study the reconfiguration of skills and knowledge, and the manifestation of activities in various contexts. These actions have been decomposed into a unique, unrepeatable sequence of activities. Flows have been decomposed into a sequence of activities that are continuously focused on a particular topic. Then, using this ontology, we have designed the collaborative environment using Semantic Media Wiki.

From a practical point of view, we have created a case study based on the Nitroclubs project (nitroclubs.eu), aiming is to raise the interest of young people in studying IT and robotics.

From a managerial point of view, this working methodology helps to recognize the ability to perform new activities that integrate the available operant resources, i.e. skills and knowledge. These activities help to extend the value proposition of the education service. Every new manifestation of an activity is followed by a version of value that the service system provides to clients in the value co-creation process. Moreover, these activities help the service to evolve and overcome challenges due to the new context. Eventually, we will advance this research on collaborative smart service development to create a pool of shared knowledge resources as Information Common Goods for TVET education service. This ontology might be expanded to evolve other service system development in the domain of TVET.

References:
[1] S. Badawi, L. Carrubbo, M. Drăgoicea, and L. Walletzky, “An analysis of the complex education service for resilience in a multi-contextual framework, INTED2021, March 8-9, 2021, (in press)
[2] M. Dragoicea et al., “Service Design for Resilience: A Multi-Contextual Modeling Perspective,” IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 185526–185543, 2020

Keywords:

TVET, smart service, collaborative service design, ontology, semantic reasoning.