Fuks, H., Mitchell, L.H.R.G, Gerosa, M.A. & Lucena, C.J.P. (2003) “Competency Management for Group Formation in the AulaNet Learning Environment”, 9th International Workshop on Groupware - CRIWG 2003, ISBN: 3-540-20117-3, Springer-Verlag, pp. 183-190, France. Competency Management for Group Formation on the AulaNet Learning Environment Hugo Fuks, Luís Henrique Raja Gabaglia Mitchell, Marco Aurélio Gerosa, Carlos José Pereira de Lucena Software Engineering Laboratory, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) R. M. S. Vicente, 225, Gávea, Rio de Janeiro – RJ, 22453-900, Brazil {hugo, raja, gerosa, lucena}@inf.puc-rio.br Abstract. The IMS Project uses the notion of competency to model educational objectives. In the AulaNet learning environment competency management is used to form subgroups that, in the case of this article, are assigned to generate new educational content for the Information Technologies Applied to Education course. The purpose of this course is to get learners to learn to work with information technology as a group, turning them into Web-based educators. 1. Introduction Compared to people working only by themselves, working in groups has advantages such as synergy, the ability to consider more information, objective evaluation, cognitive stimulation and member learning from other members [1], which can be very useful both in work and learning environments. However, it is not an easy task to form groups envisaging collaboration. Management of competencies allows the coordinator to apply some criteria to the group formation process, in order to try to achieve the desired results of the collaborative activities. This document shows how competency management was applied to extend the AulaNet 1 learning environment in order to provide features that could aid the group formation task. It also discusses the use of these new functionalities in the ITAE (Information Technologies Applied to Education) course, a discipline held entirely on the AulaNet environment for undergraduate and graduate Computer Science students as a field experiment for such new technologies. The following section briefly describes the AulaNet by summarizing the 3C Collaboration Model that guided its development and its services. Section 3 presents some aspects of the ITAE course, aimed to promote change in the learner’s working methods. Section 4 details the competency management features implemented to aid group formation and their use in ITAE. Finally, section 5 concludes the paper. 1 http://guiaaulanet.eduweb.com.br, http://www.les.inf.puc-rio.br/aulanet