Recognition of Prior Learning and Assessment of Prior Learning are increasingly common services in Australia and New Zealand. RPL is generally known as a process that simply recognises the prior educational achievements of the candidate and aligns them with the assessment process being applied. APL is more along the lines of what you call for I think. It is more like an interview process where a trained assessor will assist the candidate to express what they know so as to meet the assessment criteria. APL is not as common as RPL in Aust and NZ, and many institutions implement the services very poorly, often resulting in the candidate electing to simply do the course to avoid the strain in the RPL or APL process!
I agree though, that it could be through these processes that an education through OER could be obtained. Institutions already working in OER have a head start, because they are familiar with their own OER. Assessing the learning done through another institution's OER would be more difficult however.
I also agree that “competency standards” potentially gives OER currency in the assessment process. If an international initiative to develop AND maintain competency standards was established, then OER developers could look to them as assessment guides, learning objectives, content structure, even a base level curriculum. . . but establishing an internationally agreed set of competency standards AND maintaining them into the future is a pretty hefty thing.
I think a wiki is the natural place to develop such a thing however. We are seeing many many different courses, content and worksheets being developed on the platform, but little scope for an agreed understanding that will assist the migration and cross institutional accreditation and assessment that could make OER a very significant pathway for education. I know that Australia and New Zealand both have comprehensive competency standards:
Australia = NTIS 1
NZ = NZQA 2
And Wikibooks has the entire South African Curriculum 3 !
So . . . should the educational institutions devote one employee to work on developing, negotiating and maintaining an internationally recognised wikibook of competency units to use as an OER reference point?
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