A skills tree is part of the Skills Mapping and AI-powered learning path feature. This article includes best practices for modifying skills trees to ensure your employees have the most effective learning experience as they develop their skills.
Best practices for skills tree modifications
Keep the following best practices in mind when editing your skills tree to ensure the most effective learning experience for your employees.
1. Limit the number of domains and subdomains that you add to the skills tree.
- This will help to ensure that the skills tree’s size remains focused and is not overly broad.
2. Limit the number of skills that you add for each subdomain.
- This will help ensure that the number of skills your employees are working on is manageable.
3. When adding new skills:
- Be specific about what the employees should be able to do by the end of the learning path.
- Use action verbs, such as “analyze,” “synthesize,” “apply,” “evaluate,” and “create”.
- Consider the depth levels from Bloom’s taxonomy when deciding on these action verbs. You can find extensive resources online regarding Bloom's taxonomy.
- Make sure that all skills are aligned with your learners’ and organization’s goals.
4. Keep your audience in mind as you make edits to your skills tree.
- Consider the role(s), prior experience, and skill needs of the learning path audience.
5. Be intentional about your wording of domains, sub-domains, and skills. Learn more about these terms in our Help Center article about skills trees and why they matter.
- Keep in mind that Udemy’s search algorithms will map relevant Udemy content to each term that is included in the skills tree when generating your learning path.
- Skill examples:
- Poor-quality skill example: Learn about the skills, behaviors, and impact (SBI) framework, Introduction to “X.”
- This skill is not specific or observable. In this case, the generated learning path will include content about the term “learn” in addition to “SBI framework.”
- High-quality skill example:
- Use the SBI framework to give feedback to employees during performance reviews.
- Poor-quality skill example: Learn about the skills, behaviors, and impact (SBI) framework, Introduction to “X.”
6. Limit editing of domain and subdomain language within the skills tree as much as possible. The domains and subdomains generated follow a specific format intended to lead to more targeted search results.
- A best practice is to modify section titles when your learning path is generated. Section titles align to the domains of the skills tree.