The Europass online platform is a public product and all information that is part of it is freely available for use and re-use. The QDR supports national authorities to publish their qualifications and learning opportunities data as ‘linked open data’. Countries that are publishing their datasets must agree to the publishing agreement of QDR. The publishing agreement reflects the notion of linked open data, meaning the publication of machine-readable data under open licenses that permits data reuse. “Commercial use” refers to a possible reuse of the information published as linked open data by third parties.
Frequently Asked Questions
QDR
How does the QDR manage the data?
Is it correct that ELM provides only one class, i.e. <organization>, dedicated to awarding bodies, publishers, or owners of the qualification? Why?
Yes, these are indeed represented by a single class, because even though they may have different roles, to describe an organisation you will need to specify values for the same standard properties (e.g. legal name, location, VAT number, logo, homepage, etc.).
Is it possible to match several ISCED-F to one qualification?
Yes, it is possible to match one or more ISCED-F to one qualification.
What is the Accreditation Database?
The European Accreditation Database is a separate database that is populated automatically based on records in the QDR, which contains:
- information on programme accreditations that were included in qualifications uploaded to the QDR
- information on institutional accreditations which were uploaded to the QDR
Can you specify what the term accreditation means?
Accreditation is the act of granting credit or recognition to an educational institution that meets a general standard of the quality. Accreditation is generally granted to the institutions by competent authorities such as Ministries of Education.
What should be included under the class “learning outcome”?
The content here is defined according to Annex VI of the EQF Recommendation of 2017. Learning outcomes should be either formulated in terms of knowledge, skills, and responsibility and autonomy or as an open text field specifying what a learner is expected to know, understand and be able to do. The text should express the essence of the learning outcomes of the qualification. If the full learning outcome descriptions are too long, the ‘more information’ property can be used to supply additional free text.
What is the difference between a learning opportunity and a qualification in the data model?
A Learning Opportunity is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to achieve a given set of learning outcomes. Examples are an educational programme or a component of a programme (i.e. degree programme, a module, a course unit).
A Learning Specification is used to specify what a person did learn OR what a person can learn.
A Qualification is a generalisation of a learning specification describing details such as learning outcomes of an awarded qualification (learning specifications + EQF level + other information). In the ELM data model, learning opportunities and qualifications can be linked with each other, reusing various properties, such as the learning outcomes, as common. A learning opportunity, when successfully concluded, can lead to a qualification but is not a qualification by itself.
Does 'owner' refer to the holder of the qualification or to the entity organising the learning opportunity?
The owner is the organisation that designs and sets the content of the qualification (even though they may not be the ones directly awarding it) or learning opportunity. This agent type does not exist anymore in ELM v.2/3 version.
Who is the 'publisher' of a learning opportunity/qualification?
The publisher is the organisation registered to QDR and which publishes the information to the EU infrastructure.
What do I need in terms of resources, timing and budget?
Linked Open Data projects are not typical ICT projects as you know it. It is rather an add-on to existing systems. The exact cost and timing depend on the current state of your infrastructure and know-how, and your plan regarding the implementation details.
Can the Commission provide feedback on national databases of learning opportunities and qualifications?
The Commission has created the EMPL-ELM-SUPPORT@ec.europa.eu mailbox to provide continuous feedback and support for any question related to publishing learning opportunities and qualifications on Europass.
What if the class or property in the schema is not the same as how you define your data?
The information that you publish needs to conform the metadata schemata and their definitions. That means you have to follow the exact definitions of the classes and properties in the schema.
- Find the right class or property for all your concepts
You need to find - for each of the concepts separately - how you can translate it into an instance of the qualification metadata schema.
- A concept can correspond to a class in the learning opportunity metadata schema
Example: A language institute provides a learning opportunity ‘English as foreign language’, with identifier http://data.languageinstituteABC.nl/courses/learning-opportunities/english. In the LOQ, you will see that there is a class 'learningOpportunity'.
This is a clear match and therefore http://data.languageinstituteABC.nl/courses/learning-opportunities/english is an instance of ‘learningOpportunity'.
- A concept can correspond to a property in the qualification metadata schema
Example: A language institute provides a learning opportunity ‘English as foreign language’, with identifier http://data.languageinstituteABC.nl/courses/learning-opportunities/english. The learning opportunity has its own homepage on the website of the institute, at http://languageinstituteABC.nl/english-foreign. In the LOQ, you will see that there is a property 'homepage'.
This is a clear match: the relation between http://data.languageinstituteABC.nl/courses/learning-opportunities/english and http://languageinstituteABC.nl/english-foreign is 'homepage'.
What if you do not want to publish – or simply do not have – the information that is covered in the metadata schema?
Unless the missing data is a compulsory property, this is not a problem. It is possible to use only a subset of the classes (and properties) of the metadata schema.
What if you want to publish information that is not covered by one of the classes in the metadata schema?
In some cases, you may be able to fit such information into “additionalNote”. If this is not possible it is better omitting to publish it. In case you believe the information is important and not represented in the schemata, you can suggest the data field for future improvement.
What can I do to make others trust my data?
By making your qualifications public on QDR, you make your data trustful. But there is more that you can do to make users trust you and your data:
- Give information about yourself in business registers;
- Make your organisation web pages easily retrievable by search engines;
- Create a digital signature for your website.
How will my data interact with other data on the internet?
The goal of Linked Open Data is for your data to be available to other parties to create a network of information. Such relations require the data to have unique and persistent identifiers.
Example: Your data on qualifications can be linked to geo-spatial data (such as city, state, country) published by geonames.org. In turn, they can be linked to skills, competences and occupations published by ESCO.
Like this, we create a network that is decentralised: the data is hosted by different organisations, but accessible to everybody.
Which tools are available to support me when publishing?
We offer a “data validation tool” in QDR to support you in publishing your data on qualifications. This tool will validate your data against the model, report errors and give warnings if the information is missing or inconsistent.