Reflective Practice Exercise (Conceptual Overview)

Owned by Seth Petry-Johnson
Last updated: Aug 09, 2021
7 min read

This is a conceptual overview of the Reflective Practice Exercise. For feature-level documentation, please refer to Feature Index → Reflective Practice Exercise

Overview

The Reflective Practice Exercise (RPE) is a powerful workforce management, training, and skills acquisition tool. It allows practitioners to define their professional goals relative to a formal competency model, and to then achieve those goals by identifying specific learning activities that build and demonstrate the required skills.

For feature-level documentation please see Feature Index → Reflective Practice Exercise

Competency Models

At the center of the reflective practice concept is a Competency Model that describes skills, abilities, or knowledge that can be gained and demonstrated.

The RPE requires a 3-level Competency Model model, like this:

Competency Requirement Models

A Competency Model, by itself, only describes a set of skills that can be demonstrated or assessed. It does not describe what it means if a person demonstrates those skills.

That meaning is provided by a “Competency Requirement Model”, which selects specific competencies from the Competency Model and associates them with a proficiency level. Often this can be thought of as a Position Profile or a Credential, where the Competency Requirement Model shows the collection of competencies needed to hold a specific Position or Credential.

In order to “meet” the requirements, a Practitioner must demonstrate the required degree of proficiency in each of the target competencies.

Different Competency Requirement Models can draw from the same Competency Model, but require differing levels of proficiency. For instance, a “Certified Office Dog” and an “Office Dog In Training” are evaluated against the same set of skills, but the Certified Office Dog is expected to demonstrate a greater degree of mastery of them.

Cyclical Process

The RPE models a repeating, cyclical process in which a Practitioner completes the following steps:

  1. Choose a Competency Requirements Model representing the “target” or goal (e.g. a credential to earn or a job position to qualify for)

  2. Complete a Self Assessment, of the competencies required for that goal

  3. Optionally obtain an external assessment (e.g. from a Supervisor)

  4. Find and complete learning activities that close the competency gaps identified by the assessments

  5. Reassess and repeat

In addition to the above, at any point in the process, the Practitioner can document prior learning activities that contribute toward any of the competencies.

Dashboard

Practitioners perform the Reflective Practice Exercise via a dashboard on their Application, which looks like this:

Dashboard Element

Purpose

Dashboard Element

Purpose

Competency Requirement Model

Practitioner chooses the Competency Requirement Model model they wish to be evaluated against. This could be a credential they wish to earn or a job they wish to qualify for.

The circle graph represents their status relative to the selected model:

  • Green represents the percentage of the requirements that the Practitioner has completed or demonstrated competence in

  • Orange represents the percentage of the requirements that the Practitioner is currently “in process” of completing (e.g. there are in-progress learning activities that would close a gap)

  • Gray represents the percentage of the requirements that have not yet been satisfied

In the sample screenshot, the Compentency Requirement Model is referred to as a “Position Profile”.

Assess Proficiency

There are two different assessments:

  1. Practitioners assess their own proficiency relative to the competency model.

  2. Supervisors provide an external assessment

The circle graphs reflect the assessments. The stated percentage reflects how many competencies have been assessed. The colors represent the proficiency assessment values:

  • Green represents competencies where the Practitioner is assessed as “at or above target”

  • Orange represents “below target”

  • Gray represents “not yet assessed”

 

Set / Update Priorities

Once the list of skill gaps is identified, the Practitioner identifies the skills or competencies they want to focus on first. This helps the tool prioritize the most relevant learning activities.

The number inside the circle represents the number of competency areas that were identified as priorities.

 

Find Learning Activities

The RPE suggests Activities that will close the identified skills gaps, prioritizing the ones that match the Practitioner’s learning priorities.

Practitioners can search in different ways:

  • All Gaps - finds activities that will close any of the established competency gaps

  • “High Priority” Gaps - finds activities that will close competency gaps that are identified as especially high priorities by the selected competency model. For instance, different job profiles may have different skills that are “required” and “nice to have”

  • My Priorities - finds activities that will close the competency gaps marked as personal priorities by the Practitioner

In the sample screenshot, “My Priorities” has been customized to “GSA-PBS PD Transition” to better match a specific client’s use case.

 

Report Completed Activities

As the Practitioner completes the learning activities, the completion status graph updates to reflect progress towards the learning objectives.

The number inside the circle is the total number of completed activities. The color bands reflect the status of those activities:

  • Green represents the percentage of reported activities that have been completed

  • Orange represents the percentage of reported activities that are currently in progress

 

External Reassessment (optional)

The RPE supports (via client-specific customization) the ability to display a call-to-action on the dashboard. In this sample, this feature is used to invite Practitioners to take an externally-provided assessment in order to test their knowledge.

 

Competency Model summary

The dashboard can be filtered in different ways to focus on what the Practitioner needs to see at any given time.

  • Entire Model - Displays the entire competency model, including those competencies not included in the specified Requirements Model. This is useful for examining how a specific credential or job profile maps against the overarching competency model.

  • High Priorities - Displays only the competencies flagged as priorities by the Competency Model. (These are denoted by an alert icon next to their name.)

  • High Priority Gaps - Displays all high-priority competencies where the Practitioner is lacking the required proficiency

  • My Position Profile - Displays all competencies that are part of the target Competency Requirements Model

  • My Priorities - Displays all competencies that the Practitioner identified as a personal priority

  • Performance Gaps - Displays all competencies where the Practitioner is lacking the required proficiency

Assessment Status

For each competency area that is displayed, the Assessment Status column shows three values:

  • The proficiency from the self-assessment for that competency area;

  • The target proficiency, from the selected Competency Requirements Model; and

  • The proficiency from the supervisor’s assessment for that competency area.

For the first and third values (self and supervisor assessment, respectively), the color of the value indicates its status relative to the target proficiency:

  • Green indicates the assessment is at or above the target, and

  • Red indicates the assessment is below the target.

Activity Progress

For each competency area that is displayed, the Progress column displays a summary of the Practitioner’s progress towards meeting the proficiency level required by the Competency Requirements Model.

In the competency model, a “leaf node” is either met (the Practitioner has demonstrated the minimum required proficiency level) or unmet (the Practitioner has NOT demonstrated the required proficiency).

Progress is “rolled up” to higher levels of the competency model as well, providing an aggregate view of progress across different levels of the model.

In the rollup progress bars, colors indicate completion status:

  • Green segments indicate the number of competency areas, within the group, where the Practitioner meets the required proficiency;

  • Orange segments indicate the number of competency areas, within the group, where the Practitioner has an in-progress activity that will satisfy the requirement, once completed; and

  • Gray segments indicate the number of competency areas, within the group, where the Practitioner is missing the required proficiency and has nothing in-progress.

The Find Qualifications search icon provides the same function as the Find Learning Activities but for the specific competency or competency area.

Aggregate workforce proficiency analysis

Individuals use the RPE to assess themselves against a specific set of requirements, such as a job profile.

Organizations use the RPE to compare multiple sets of requirements (e.g. multiple job profiles) against an aggregate competency model.

For example, consider a certification that is awarded to facilities (not individual people) that meet some regulatory requirements, such as a “Certified Environmentally Friendly Waste Management Facility”. To earn this certification, the facility must have people working in it that possess specific competencies relating to the proper disposal of toxic chemicals, awareness of reporting requirements, etc.

Hiring a single person that meets all of those requirements would be difficult, so the facility can earn the credential as long as each required competency is possessed by at least one person in the building. No one person is sufficient to meet the requirement, but a collection of employees assessed as a cohort can meet the requirement.

The RPE supports this model through the use of “Aggregate Competency Requirement Models” and a “Gap Analysis” report.

The actual gap analysis page looks like this: