Compose skills

YOUR CHARTER

Full charter: required

Flexible charter: as indicated in the charter

Fast charter: not used

Note: If your learning experience is the "make" style, the skills you compose here are crucial to planning your learning experience and giving learners credit for their achievements. If your initiative is the "use" style, this exercise can help you structure your content and plan activities and assessments.

Skills are abilities that require critical thinking, iteration, and troubleshooting to achieve a desired outcome.

Skill verbs​

Every skill begins with a verb that implies judgment, higher-order problem solving, and/or creativity. Here are common skill verbs (you're not limited to these):

Skill Description	Skill Verbs
Decide from alternative processes or approaches	Decide, Determine
Create through iteration of a process to achieve a result	Create, Configure, Write, Prototype, Construct, Adapt, Refine, Improve
Create through iteration: Unity verbs	Animate, Model, Sculpt, Import, Script, Paint, Optimize
Diagnose and solve problems	Troubleshoot, Solve [problems], Diagnose and fix, Diagnose, Debug
Implement best practices or standards, requiring judgment and knowledge of concepts	Implement [standards], Execute
Analyze content through understanding of concepts, to figure out how to approach a problem	Analyze, Synthesize, Explore, Evaluate, Interpret, Research, Plan
Control the outcome of an automated process	Control, Program, Automate
Generate finished products/projects to meet requirements/specifications	Generate, Integrate, Develop, Analyze [specifications], Anticipate [needs], Achieve [the vision], Align

As you compose your skills, keep these verbs in mind. Your learning experience designer (LXD) will help you finalize the wording of your skills.

More guidance on composing your skills

In order to

A skill may have an "in order to" clause, like the following:

• Decide on the appropriate lighting system to use in order to achieve common outcomes in a Universal Render Pipeline (URP) project.
• Create and configure interactive UI components in order to implement simple UI functionality.

Add an "in order to" clause when you want to make clear that practicing the skill must lead to a certain outcome or standard. Note that "in order to" is followed by a verb — this verb should also be a skills verb.

Ideally, you should be able to switch an "in order to" skill as follows:

• Achieve common outcomes in a Universal Render Pipeline (URP) project by deciding on the appropriate lighting system to use.
• Implement simple UI functionality by creating interactive UI components.

Cumulative competencies, unique skills​

Once a learner has achieved all the skills in a competency, that learner can be considered competent in that subject matter to that level.

Each competency is made up of a unique set of skills. Rather than repeat skills in multiple competencies, organize skills within competencies so that the competencies can build on one another. For example, don't add "Configure light sources and shadows to light a scene" to every lighting competency!

Don't add any skills that are covered by your prerequisites.

Learning objectives

Learning objectives describe discrete tasks that the learner must do, or facts the learner must know, in order to practice a skill.

Writing LOs is very similar to writing skills, but this task comes later in the Toolkit process.

ACTION

Consult your charter. If you have a link to the Competencies and skills worksheet, compose your skills now.