Abstract:

The recent trends of Europe are reflected in the European Policy Agenda, and are connected to the need for development of knowledge-based economy. Among the important factors influencing this policy are: i) aging of the population; ii) increasing demand for lifelong learning opportunities; iii) shift of the system from ‘knowledge’ to ‘competence’ and from ‘teaching’ to ‘learning’. These changes have stimulated the demand for workers’ knowledge and skills upgrade. In addition, the EU education policy was reinforced, as a consequence of recent financial crisis, by linking up education and training with labour market needs.

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 tackling specific work areas. The Leonardo da VINCI TOI Project STRENGTH (Structuring of Work Related Competences in Chemical Engineering), 2013-1-ES1-LEO05-66726, is 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 the cooperation between the world of work and vocational education and training, and foresees transferring and upgrading 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 tool multi-lingually treats different professions, jobs and related competence sets, and has a functionality of an advisor. CPA is providing all necessary information and functionality of competence self-assessment 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 paper describes the project STRENGTH, competence, competency and competence profiles at glance, and then presents the tool CPA and real world cases of its usage for chemistry engineering.

Keywords:

competence, competency, competence profile, intelligent tool, chemistry engineering