According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a cognitive skill: of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering). Everyone thinks, reasons through their actions, and remembers; from babies to the elderly everyone exhibits these to some degree. These basic skills are related to meta-level skills such as planning, problem-solving and designing. In a professional program, we want these basic and meta- skills to be at a high level of performance: able to understand and practice the discipline in an effective and efficient fashion. What is needed to develop this higher level of performance?

Just because you might have done something once, or perhaps a few times does not mean that you are an expert. There is also confusion about the process of doing something and the final outcome; it is possible to produce something that looks good by accident!

Insights...

The skill and expertise literature from Cognitive Science/Psychology provides the insights, knowledge and methods we need to leverage:

• The seminal work by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) provide us with five general levels of expertise going from novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient to expert. This is the starting point, the big categories and it is important to remember that this is a continuum.
• In our own work on skill and expertise, we have found that a finer graduation is necessary. We add a level before novice, the naïve to separate those who know something from those who do not know anything. We also separate the competent into senior and journeyman to separate those who are competent, but who are also qualified to train and educate apprentices (the old journeman level of skilled trades). Lastly, we also find it useful to separate expert into consultant/expert, and master where the consultants and experts focus on interpreting and educating the masses about what the masters have created. Every instructor probably thinks that they are at least competent, doing ok, and do not see themselves on a scale of teaching expertise below that; they know what they are doing and know how to do it contrary to evidence. Many appear to assume that they are experts in the field of teaching through the mere feat of obtaining a graduate degree. If it was only that simple!
• To put our extensions in context, Masters typically create or extend the discipline, develop the new ideas, the new science, create a body of work that sets their ideas and skills apart. They might write the initial book or article on the finer points. At the next level Experts are expected to have great breadth and depth, and usually interpret or tweak what the Masters derive, they write the follow-on text books, they are the disciples. The Consultants are well read, follow various experts, know how to apply what has been written, have experience, can provide guidance for others to follow. The Journeyman are those knee-deep in it, doing the deed, often working with apprentices, helping others implement, use the ideas. They read the text books, track best practice, follow the consultants and pundits, and they seek insights and recipes for success. Most people in any field are at the senior level, less at the journeyman level, and it can take 6-8 years to reach this level of competence (if not longer). Journeyman is considered a terminal level and there is no reason to assume that someone proceeds from journeyman unless they have furthered developed their skill and expertise. It is not just a matter of putting in the time. It is like the usual distinction of Associate Professor and Full Professor. Just doing what an Associate Professor does is not enough to be promoted; there are usually high expectations for impact and international recognition for promotion to full.
• Junior thinkers (naïve, novice, junior) will ‘think’ differently from the senior thinkers. Cognitive skill development is not linear and it is possible for some of the cognitive skills to outpace the others. For example, someone can be very good at remembering and memorization and exhibit senior level performance, but still be operating at the novice level when problem solving, planning, and designing.
• The research has shown that most cognitive meta-skills like problem-solving and planning do not transfer between domains and situations; just because you can manage X does not mean you can manage Y without some additional learning and skill development. Just because you developed expertise in your research field does not mean that the expertise extends to other topics such as general management or teaching.
• There is the concept of deliberate practice that is required if someone wants to improve; to reach a true expert level will require in the range of 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. You do not improve just by ‘doing’. You need to be more intentional, reflective, deliberate about improving and what it is you want to improve and why.
• A typical course has about 144 hours of student ‘learning’ (lectures, assignments, labs, tutorials, studying, etc.). If the topic is largely isolated without multiple lectures building up the knowledge and skills, the students will just be entering the novice level of expertise at term end. If there is a good design of complementary topics during a program, it is probably possible to consider that the student might be at the junior level upon graduation. Definitely no higher unless they have had exceptional internships, co-op terms, or mentoring during their program. They may think that they are experts or have mastered the topic, this is a delusion. Just because we talk about them mastering a topic or being a senior, does not mean that their cognitive skills match the words used. They are not yet senior thinkers, experts, or Masters.

• There are self-perception problems associated with cognitive skills (basic and meta); there is over confidence and the lack of self-awareness.
• You can improve some muscle memory and habituation aspects of automaticity without deliberate practice. You can also make some of the cognitive skills quicker in response, but these will not be necessarily ‘better’ in quality. Doing things faster is not always better in quality nor does it always demonstrate improvement.
• True experts are aware of what they do and don’t do. They know what they don’t know. They understand the limitations of their knowledge. There is tacit knowledge and processes in play; automaticity and habituation of a sort. If asked, an expert usually describes the process as they were taught, not how they do it. In a series of case studies, highly qualified individuals were observed doing their daily tasks for two weeks and approximately 10-15% of the performed tasks were identified as ‘I did not do that’. Experts are not always consciously aware of what they do and do not do (McKay et. al. 1992).

Most instructors do not appear to consciously consider the required cognitive skills implicitly or explicitly associated with the course material and assessments. We consider course pre-requisites in terms of knowledge and material, but do we consider the cognitive skills? Do we consider Bloom's taxonomy when looking at our own course, and do we compare this to previous courses? Are the students cognitively prepared for what we will be doing in terms of instructional methodology and assessment methods?

Some instructors seem to assume that the required skills will exist without investigation or empirical evidence. Or, there is possibly flawed knowledge about how cognitive skills are developed. “Students learn by doing”, “Students have worked in teams before”, “Students have done design tasks in other courses”, “Students should know this by now”. The science says otherwise! The cognitive skills required by a course need to be consciously developed prior to the course and high levels will not develop otherwise. An instructor should review the course design and understand the types and levels of cognitive skills required throughout the course as they relate to the learning outcomes and assessments. These required skills should match the skills possessed by the incoming students!

Other observations...

• Do not assume that skills and their level will remain the same term-to-term. It is important to re-test and check the assumptions every offering.
• The students must see value in the developing skills and see differences in skill levels; in some cases where the course focuses on skill development, they need to be humbled (a bit) to deal with the over confidence they come in with.
• The students must eventually be able to look at any process and ‘see’ the cognitive skills in play (basic and meta); there are different skills needed to identify a problem or opportunity, figure out the importance or impact of the problem or opportunity, requirements that will address the problem or opportunity, potential solutions, determining which solution to proceed with, actual solution design (detailed level), implementation, testing, deployment, maintaining, etc. There are different types of problem-solving, design, analysis, and planning throughout the design process and it will be rare for a single individual to be well skilled in all. The students will need to understand the different roles, different skills, and understand how they all relate by graduation! This is true in all fields, from engineering to the development of public policies to being an instructor.
• It is difficult (almost impossible) to focus on a cognitive skill while learning something else at the same time. You have to progress into it. Junior students will have a very hard time learning TWO things at once and it is often possible to overlook the skill learning component. Carefully choose the cognitive skills you want your students to learn as to not overwhelm them.

Tips For Beginners

• Guiding questions to ask themselves during course design - Sections 7, 8 and 9 provide guidance. Start with Section 7.
• Ways to evaluate the cognitive skill levels of students. See Section 12.

Further reading

• Brown, P. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2017). Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise. Mariner Books.
• Dreyfus, H., & Dreyfus, S. (1980). A five-stage model of mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition. (Supported by the U.S. Air Force, Office of Scientific research (AFSC) under contract F49620-C-0063 with the University of California) Berkeley.
• McKay K.N., Buzacott J.A., Charness N., and F.R. Safayeni (1992), The Scheduler’s Predictive Expertise: An Interdisciplinary Perspective., Artificial Intelligence in Operational Research, Doukidis G.I., and R.J. Paul (eds), Journal of the Operational Research Society, Macmillan Press, London, pp. 139-150.