Supporting life-long competence development using the TENCompetence infrastructure: a first experiment

This paper describes a test of the TENCompetence infrastructure that was developed for supporting lifelong competence development. The infrastructure contains supportive elements, among others the listing of competences and their components, competence development plans attached to competences and the possibility to mark elements as complete. In order to test our hypothesis that the infrastructure leads to better competence development, an experiment was carried out. For six weeks, 44 Bulgarian
teachers followed a distance course on a specific teaching methodology. Part of them used this infrastructure, part used an infrastructure which was similar, except for the four supportive elements mentioned. The results showed that in the experimental condition, more people passed the final competence assessment, and people felt more in control of their own learning. No differences between the two groups were found between on the amount and appreciation of collaboration and on further measures of competence development.