An Automatic Tool Supporting Life-long Learning Based on a Semantic-Oriented Approach for Comparing Qualifications

Students’ mobility is a relevant topic but, while in Higher Education transfers between Universities are a praxis, in Vocational Educational and Training are still a declaration of intent. The main obstacles are basically related to the heterogeneity of national qualification systems, and to the lack for definitive transparency measures. Although several European instruments are being introduced in this perspective (like the European Qualification Framework), the internationalization process is still in a preliminary phase. In this paper, a methodology exploiting formal descriptions for supporting the creation of mutual understanding and for defining transnational referencing rules is defined. Rules, developed by actors involved in VET provision, are then applied to a knowledge base hosting annotated national qualifications to experiment qualification comparison and to measure competence gap.