Automatic Skills Association for Resources (and in turn Learning Experiences)

Overview

This guide explains how skills are automatically extracted from Skills Builder and associated with resources and Learning Experiences in our Learning Platform.

Prerequisites

• Skills Builder service must be enabled by Learning Pool

How It Works

1. Associating Skills with Resources

For Adapt and PDF Resources:

• When uploaded, an API sends the resource metadata to Skills Builder
• Skills Builder scans the metadata and extracts relevant skills
• These skills are then associated with the resource in the Learning Platform

For All Other Resource Types:

• When created or updated (meeting specific conditions), the Learning Platform sends the resource title, description, and a callback URL to Skills Builder
• Skills Builder processes the skills through its ontology
• Skills are associated with the resource in the Learning Platform within 10 minutes

2. Associating Skills with Learning Experiences

• When a resource with associated skills is added to a Learning Experience, those skills are automatically inherited
• These auto-associated skills are labeled as 'Skills Builder' in the 'Added By' column of the Skills Builder table for that Learning Experience

Conditions for Skill Association

Except for Adapt and PDF resources, the following conditions must be met:

1. Resource Title:
   1. Minimum 5 characters
   2. Maximum 14 tokens (words/punctuation)
2. Resource Description:
   1. Minimum 50 characters
   2. Maximum 550 tokens
   3. Rich text removed

Managing Automatically Associated Skills

• You can disable an automatically added skill for a specific Learning Experience using the slider in the 'Actions' column of the Skills Builder table
• Disabling a skill prevents it from being included in user filters for that Learning Experience in the Discover page

Skill Cleanup Process

• When a resource is removed from a Learning Experience, the LXP automatically "cleans up" Skills Builder skills. The system checks:
  • Are there other resources with this skill in the Learning Experience?
    • If yes, the skill remains
  • Was the skill manually assigned to the Learning Experience?
    • If yes, further checks are performed
  • Has an admin disabled the skill in the Skills Builder table?
    • If yes, the skill is removed
    • If not, the skill remains

Why This Feature Is Important

This feature reduces manual intervention by admins and enhances the user experience by:

• Enabling skill-based searching and filtering
• Improving content recommendations

Importantly, when Learning Experiences are automatically tagged with skills, learners can use the skills filter on the 'Discover' page to find content that matches their specific skill development needs. This direct connection between automatic tagging and discoverability enhances the learner's ability to find relevant content and supports more targeted, skill-based learning journeys. Check out this page for an overview of skill filtering on the 'Discover' page. 

For an overview of Automatic Skill Association check out this page.

FAQs

Q: Does this work for all resource types?

A: Yes, but Adapt and PDFs have their content scanned, while other types use only the title and description.

Q: How long does it take for skills to be associated?

A: For Adapt/PDF resources, it depends on the content amount. For other types, it can take up to 10 minutes.

Q: Can I view skills associated with a particular resource?

A: Currently, you can only see automatically added skills by attaching the resource to a Learning Experience.

Q: What if the automated skill assignment doesn't work well?

A: You can manually 'toggle off' automatically extracted skills per Learning Experience.

Q: Will existing resources have skills extracted?

A: Currently, only new and updated resources will have skills extracted. Work is ongoing to allow for the processing of existing resources.

Resources and Support

• For further assistance, contact the Learning Pool Support Team.
• Additional resources and documentation may be provided as needed.