Skill Aggregation

level 1: beginner

• Little or no previous experience
• Doesn’t want to learn: wants to accomplish a goal
• No discretionary judgement
• Rigid adherence to rules

Level 2: Advanced Beginner

• Starts trying tasks on their own
• Has difficulty troubleshooting
• Wants information fast
• Can place some advice in context required
• Uses guidelines, but without holistic understanding

Level 3: Competent

• Develops conceptual models
• Troubleshoots on their own
• Seeks out expert advice
• Sees actions at least partially in terms of long-term plans and goals

Level 4: Proficient

• Guided by maxims applied to the current situation
• Sees situations holistically
• Will self-correct based on previous performance
• Learns from the experience of others
• Frustrated by oversimplified information

Level 5: Expert

• No longer relies on rules, guidelines, or maxims
• Works primarily from intuition
• Analytic approaches only used in novel situations or when problems occur
• When forced to follow set rules, performance is degraded