[uf-new] hResume missing qualifications and grades

[Chuck Allen]

Glenn,

A couple reactions:

1. Based on some recent discussion/research in our community, I think the UK market presents some fairly unique requirements since it is one of the 
few countries with a relatively well-known, widely referenced national system of course accreditation for pre-university study. The wrinkle our 
"resume parsing" service providers find in UK resumes/CVs (and what you reference in your example) is the need to capture course accreditation level 
as well as grade. Here's a snippet example:

 > 1992-1994 SchoolName, UK
 > A Level: Mathematics (B), Physics (C), Economics (C)
 > AS Level: Electronics (A)
 > GCSE: Nine at grade C or above, including English, Mathematics & French.

The HR-XML work group recently discussed a new component to handle representations like this within resumes. However, for right now, our rough 
consensus is to leave this as a localization for the UK market. Below is the draft model that we sketched out, but have not yet moved forward:
AccreditedCourseWork
-- CourseLevelCode (e.g., "AS," "A-Level," etc.)
-- CourseCount
-- TimePeriod
-- EducationScoreDetails (reduced to Score/Mark)
-- EducationOrganization
-- Subject
-- A Country Code or AcceditationSchemeID?

2. As with everything the microformat community considers (or HR-XML for that matter) there's a slippery slope here in terms of complexity. It seems 
what makes a good microformat is something simple and relatively flat versus hierarchical. HR-XML focuses a bit more on the back-office 
system-to-system communication of data, so we have a bit more leeway. However, on the particular topic of representing education, we certainly realize 
that we do not wish to be anything like a full "transcript" standard. However, I think there is a lot of value to some simple standardization of very 
basic concepts. "Grade" is an interesting one. There are easily a dozen consortia and standards organizations producing relevant 
standards/specifications and I don't think you'll find much consistency in terminology nor corresponding data type (grade, mark, score, score format, 
etc.)

Being designed for humans first and computers second, the Microformats community isn't as concerned with data types and data validation as HR-XML. 
However, HR-XML is currently trying to advance a few ideas to better ensure interoperability with learning and education communities. We're using the 
term "Score" to refer to the numeric variety of "grades". Here's a draft proposal we've submitted to the UN/CEFACT core data type workgroup:
http://docs.hr-xml.org/resources/CandidatePaper_NewCDT_Score_0p2-1-DRAFT.pdf
I not yet sure about the name for the textual or symbolic variety of "grade". Perhaps, we'll just call this "Grade" or "Mark" or "ScoreFormat". Still 
having that "what's in a name" debate on this.

I hope this information proves useful. I'd welcome feedback online or offline regarding any of the above.

Chuck Allen

-------------------------
HR-XML notes:
 > Discussed patterns in the UK relating to information about
 > accredited course work often found in CV's. This is usually
 > a course of secondary (ISCED 3) or pre-university study
 >
 > Questions:
 > -- Is this a UK localization? At the very least
 > it is safe to say that few other countries have
 > a system of secondary study accreditation and
 > credit transfer that is as consistent and widely
 > implemented as the NQF in the UK. See:
 > http://tinyurl.com/5sswg7
 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Qualifications_Framework
 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCSE
 >
 > -- Might some of this be mapped to competency
 > records and evidence? Yes. Yet at least in UK resumes
 > this type of accredited secondary course work is
 > commonly broken out in resumes and CVs. If you look
 > at the IMAP model for capturing NQF data, it does seem
 > like it was intended as a broader mechanism for
 > describing competencies than something designed around
 > this course-work communication issue.




Glenn Jones wrote:
> I have been marking up a number of CVs with hResume and believe that
> there is a major piece missing from the specification. Most CVs have
> some sort of educational history, which will contain information such as
> institution name, qualifications and grades. Some real life examples:
> 
> a)	1987-1990, University of Bristol BSc (Hons) Degree in Computer
> Science
> b)	Mathematics Higher B 
> c)	1992: A levels Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics,
> Chemistry (all grade A)
> d)	5 O levels (Grades A-C)
> e)	In 1999 I graduated with honours from a 4 year Hons BSc in
> Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science at the University of
> Edinburgh, Scotland. This degree is designed to give the student a firm
> grounding in the subjects of Artificial Intelligence and Computer
> Science while demonstrating how the two are related and how each can be
> used to supplement the other.
> 
> Currently the education element of hResume is based on hCalendar which
> is great at dealing with the time elements of education item such as
> start date, end date and duration. It has also been expanded with an
> embedded hCard to help indicate the institution name, address etc. 
> 
> But this combination of hCalendar and hCard only addresses half of the
> common semantic information communicated about education history. How do
> we mark-up qualifications, subjects and grades? If I was to design a
> specification based on real world use and current schemas like HR-XML it
> would look something like this:
> 
> Education
> 	Institution (hCard)
> 	dtstart
> 	dtend
> 	duration
> 	summary
> 	qualification (one or more)
> 		name
> 		subject
> 		grade
> 		description
> 		number
> 
> Has anyone else come up against this problem. Is there interest in
> changing the current draft specification to make more representatives of
> real life publishing needs?
> 
> Glenn Jones 


-- 
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Chuck Allen
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