Skills: add proficiency levels to skills

Create and edit proficiency levels of skills for your learning content

Assign proficiency levels for each skill in your portal. Update your learners' skills after every course or learning journey they complete.

Availability: depends on your LearnUpon plan

Ask your Customer Success Manager or the support team to turn on the skills feature for your portal.

Skill proficiency: overview

Proficiency refers to the level of skill a learner holds: anything from foundational through to expert level. These optional levels add extra detail and context for a course.

Admins set up these proficiency levels at the portal level to apply to all courses. Admins can add as many skills, and as many proficiency levels, as are required by their organization.

Learners can view the skills and proficiency levels linked to a course through the course’s details page. Learners cannot create their own skills. 

As part of setting up the skills for a portal, admins can:

• accept the default proficiency scales provided

OR

• define each level manually with terms applicable to your organization

When available in the portal, admins can link proficiencies with:  

• job titles
• courses or learning journeys
• learners

The associated proficiencies are editable as required. For example, you can edit the proficiency levels for a job title, when the job’s responsibilities change.

When learners complete courses or learning journeys, LearnUpon automatically updates their learners' proficiency levels in their skills, connecting their learning to their career growth.

Prerequisites

Tip: for best results, organizations need to define and agree on their skills framework and verification methods internally, before starting to add skills in LearnUpon.

To make the most of the skills feature:

• associate Job titles with skills: this option requires a custom user data field called Job title with titles provided for your organization

See:

• Skills: create and edit skills, link skills to job titles and courses
• Custom user data: set up custom fields

Access permissions

• all admins: have full access to this feature
• all learners with permissions: can add skills manually to their own profiles

Define the proficiency levels for your portal

The skills feature provides a default set of proficiency levels.

You can use the default levels, or define different ones for your organization. The feature requires a minimum of 4 levels.

1. From main navigation go to Settings > Users > Skills to view the default levels.
2. To edit select Edit proficiency scale.
3. From Edit proficiency scale, you can:
   • change the level labels
   • edit level descriptions
   • add more levels
   • remove a level - the feature requires 4 or more levels
4. Save to finish.

Assign proficiencies to job titles

Connect the skills your organization value to the job titles that require the skills.

1. From main navigation go to Skills > your skill > Job titles.
2. Select Edit.
3. From Edit skill:
   • for Assign to job titles, select job titles to link to the specific skill
   • use the sliders to set the expected proficiency level for the skill for each role
4. Save to finish.

The following screenshot shows an example Assign to job titles with proficiencies assigned to the job titles listed.

Add proficiency levels to courses

You can add proficiency levels to courses through the Skills page, or through the Courses page. Admins access both these pages from main navigation.

Add proficiency levels to courses through Skills

1. From main navigation go to Skills > your skill > Edit.
2. From Edit skill:
   • for Assign to courses, select courses to link to the specific skill
   • use the sliders to set the proficiency of the skill expected from completing the course
3. Save to finish.

Add proficiency levels to courses through Courses

1. From main navigation go to Courses > your course.
2. From the course Info page select Skills.
3. Select Assign skill.
4. From the Skills dropdown, select the relevant skills for the course.
5. For each skill, use the sliders to set the proficiency of the skill expected from completing the course.
6. Save to finish.

The following screenshot shows an example Assign to courses, where you can identify courses to improve the relevant skill, and indicate the proficiency learners can gain from the course.

Add skills and proficiencies to a learning journey

Skills are one of the nodes available as decision points within a learning journey. You can add standalone skills, separate from courses, as part of steps on a learning journey. When you add a skill to a learning journey you set the proficiency attained through the learning journey at the same time.

To change the skill or its proficiency on a learning journey, you need to edit the journey.

See Learning journeys: create and publish a learning journey

Assign skills and proficiencies to learners

Associate named skills with individual learners, and indicate the level of their proficiency in the skill.

When learners complete a course that includes the relevant skill, LearnUpon updates their proficiency for that skill.

You can add proficiencies for multiple learners from the Skills page, or for one learner at a time through the Users page.

Assign proficiency levels to many learners through Skills

1. From main navigation go to Skills > your skill > Learners.
2. Select Assign learners.
3. From Learners dropdown, select the learner names.
4. For each skill, use the sliders to set the proficiency of the learner for that skill.
5. Save to finish.

The following screenshot shows an example Assign learners, where you can identify learners who have a relevant skill, and indicate their current proficiency.

Assign proficiency levels to individual learners through Users

1. From main navigation go to Users > learner name > Skills.
2. Select Assign skills.
3. From the Skills dropdown, select the relevant skills for the learner.
4. For each skill, use the sliders to set the proficiency of the learner for that skill.
5. Save to finish.

The following screenshot shows the skills of an individual learner viewed by an admin. This page includes quick filters of Current proficiency, Attainment method, Verified, and a sort option, to help manage large volumes of skills. 

Edit a proficiency level

Edit a proficiency level for a job title or a course: Skills page

1. From main navigation 

   • select Skills > your skill > Edit.

     OR

   • select Skills. For the specific skill, select More (aka 3-dot menu) > Edit.
2. Make changes to the proficiencies for the job title or the courses as required.
3. Save to finish.

The following screenshot shows a sample Skills page with  More > Edit expanded for the skill Agile management.

Edit a proficiency level for a course: Courses page

1. From main navigation go to Courses > your course.
2. From the course Info page select Skills.
3. For the relevant skill, select More (aka 3-dot menu) > Edit proficiency level.
4. Make changes to the proficiency for the skill as required.
5. Save to finish.

Edit a proficiency level for a learner: Users page

1. From main navigation go to Users > learner name > Skills.
2. For the relevant skill, select More (aka 3-dot menu) > Edit proficiency level.
3. Make changes to the proficiency for the skill as required.
4. Save to finish.

Learner view: skills

When they have permissions, learners can update their own skills and track their skills development from their user profile.

See:

• Skills: set up skills verification for your portal
• Learner view: add skills to your profile

Note: learners can only add skills already defined for the portal by the admin. They cannot define their own skills from scratch.

See:

• Skills: create, edit and manage skills in your portal
• Skills: create skills by batch upload
• Custom user data: set up custom fields