Competencies & frameworks

Competencies let you describe what learners should be able to do. A framework is an organized, reusable set of competencies; from there you attach individual competencies to the assessments that measure them, and map them down to specific questions.

This works the same whether you track occupational skills for a workforce, program outcomes for a degree, curriculum standards for a school, or product proficiencies for a customer academy.

What this does

A competency is a single statement of ability (“Configure a firewall rule”, “Analyze a primary source”). You group competencies into a framework, then attach them to assessments so each assessment declares which skills a strong result provides evidence for, and map individual questions to the skills they measure.

Alongside the authoring surface, Lurno has a set of learner-outcome surfaces — a mastery matrix, an evidence timeline, a credentials gallery, and a dossier export — that read from competency evidence records. Read the “Mastery, evidence & credentials” section below before you plan around them: how evidence gets written is the part most people get wrong.

Before you start

Open Competencies in the sidebar; the page is headed Competency Frameworks. The address /dashboard/frameworks opens the same page.
If you administer more than one organization, pick the organization at the top first — frameworks are org-owned.
You need competency-authoring permission on the framework’s organization to author anything.

Platform frameworks vs. your own

Lurno publishes a small set of platform frameworks (ready-made curriculum standards). They belong to the platform, not to any organization, so they are read-only for everyone in your tenant: the page shows a badge marking the framework as centrally published, alongside the note “This framework is maintained centrally and is read-only. Create a copy in your organization to customize it.” There is no Edit control on them at all.

Each platform framework is granted to the organizations that need it — a national curriculum is relevant to schools in that country and noise for everyone else. A grant on a parent organization covers its whole tree. To have one granted to yours, ask Lurno.

To tailor one, use Create a copy. That copies every competency into your organization, keeping the existing structure; the copy is yours to rename, prune, and extend, and the original stays untouched. Frameworks you create yourself are editable from the start.

Very large frameworks can refuse to copy in one go — the dialog says so and asks you to narrow the selection first.

How frameworks are organized

Competencies in a framework are grouped into a browsable tree along up to three levels: Subject → Grade → Domain. The first two labels follow your organization’s terminology overrides, so a school might see Subject / Class, and a workforce tenant whatever it has renamed them to — see Terminology. “Domain” is a fixed label. The values themselves come from your organization’s curriculum reference data; see Curriculum & reference data.

Grouping keeps large frameworks readable instead of one long list. The tree has Expand all / Collapse all, a search box, and a Showing N of M competencies counter. Competencies you haven’t filed under those levels appear together in an Ungrouped bucket, so nothing gets lost.

There is no screen for defining additional grouping levels of your own — Subject, Grade, and Domain are the only axes the authoring UI writes.

Build a framework

Open Competencies. Use New Framework to start from scratch, Import to bring one in, or select a platform framework and choose Create a copy.
New Framework asks for a title and an optional description. That’s the whole form — there is no source field to fill in.
Import takes either a pasted array of competencies as Structured JSON, or a list of curriculum standard UUIDs, one per line or comma-separated.
With a framework selected, use Add Competency for each one. Give it a title and, optionally, a Code (derived from the title if you leave it blank). Set Required evidence and Minimum score %; they default to 1 and 70.
In the same dialog, file the competency under the framework’s levels using the Subject / Grade / Domain pickers. The domain list narrows to the subject you chose. Anything left unset lands in Ungrouped until you place it.

The framework header shows three counters: Competencies, Learners with progress, and Credentials issued.

Map competencies to an assessment

Competency mapping happens on assessments.

Open the assessment and go to its Outcomes view. The card is titled Outcomes & skills — “Skills a strong result on this assessment provides evidence for.”
Choose Add a skill. The panel searches across your organization’s frameworks and the platform-published standards; type at least two characters, or browse the standards tab. If nothing matches, it offers to create what you typed as a new skill.

The Curriculum standards tab is a browsable Subject › Grade › Domain tree rather than one long list — the same tree the Create flow and the Frameworks page use. Groups start collapsed; searching by code or title looks inside collapsed groups and shows a breadcrumb for each hit. That matters on a national curriculum with thousands of items.

Ticking attaches, un-ticking detaches, and the panel stays open so you can add several in a row.
Attach the skills the assessment measures. The header counter reads Skills measured · N of M.
Go to the assessment’s Content view. Under each question, Map skills opens a picker listing the skills you attached at the assessment level — you can only map a question to a skill the assessment itself is measuring. Tick the ones that question measures.
Back on Outcomes, each skill with at least one mapped question shows a Tracking pill; the rest read “No questions measure this yet”.

If some attached skills have no mapped questions, the assessment’s readiness checklist raises a warning — “Some attached skills have no mapped questions”. It does not block publishing.

Attaching skills to an assessment works with either competency-authoring permission or advanced assessment-configuration permission.

Outcomes on modules and lessons are a different thing

Modules and lessons have an Add outcome control in their settings, but it does not attach framework competencies. Its two tabs are From library, which picks a curriculum standard from one of your curriculums, and Custom outcome, a free-text label and description. Use it to state what a lesson covers; use the assessment mapping above for anything that feeds mastery.

Mastery, evidence & credentials

Mastery is computed from evidence records, one per piece of evidence, each carrying a score percentage. When evidence is written, Lurno recomputes that learner’s progress on the competency:

Competencies created through the UI use the score threshold. The learner’s average score across their evidence is compared with Minimum score %; at or above it, the competency flips to Mastered, otherwise In progress. With no evidence at all it stays Not started.
When a competency transitions to Mastered, a credential is issued automatically. There is no manual “issue credential” step and no “recalculate” button — progress recomputes in place.

Evidence comes from releasing a graded attempt

Releasing a graded attempt writes competency evidence, so mastery, credentials and dossiers fill up through normal marking.

The rules are worth knowing exactly, because they decide what a mastery figure means:

Releasing is the trigger, not grading. A graded-but-unreleased attempt never feeds mastery. Evidence is written when you release the result to the learner.
Failed attempts still count as evidence. A poor score is a data point; the competency’s own threshold decides whether it amounts to mastery. Evidence is not a synonym for success.
The score depends on how you attached the competency. Attach it to specific questions and the evidence score is the weighted sub-score over just those questions. Attach it to the assessment as a whole and it’s the attempt’s overall score. The first is far more precise, and it’s the reason to attach at question level.
A retake replaces, it does not average. Lurno keeps the newest evidence per source, so a second attempt at the same assessment supersedes the first rather than dragging the mean around.
Re-releasing the same attempt writes nothing new. Bulk re-releases and replays are safe.

Evidence records themselves are immutable — supersession is a rule applied when reading, not a rewrite.

Attaching a competency to an assessment still records coverage — which skills the assessment claims to measure. What changed is that coverage now also decides what an attempt’s evidence is scored against.

Summaries refresh as evidence lands, and a nightly pass reconciles anything a live recompute missed, so a figure that looks stale usually corrects itself overnight.

Where the outcome surfaces live:

Staff — open a person from Enrollment → People and switch to the Competencies tab: a Mastery matrix, an Evidence timeline, a Credentials gallery, and a Verified evidence pack card whose Export verified dossier button downloads the pack. Guardians see the same tab, minus the export (“Dossier export is staff-only”).
Learners — My competencies in the learner app: “Track your mastery, evidence, and earned credentials”, with a framework selector, statuses (Not started / In progress / Mastered / Expired), an evidence list, credentials, and an Export your dossier card. The export offers JSON and CSV.
Learners, again — earned skill badges also appear under Skill badges on My credentials, alongside certificates, so a learner sees everything they’ve earned in one place. See Your progress & certificates.

Mastery in reporting

Mastery is now part of certified reporting rather than only a per-person screen:

Measure	What it counts
Mastered	Competencies at or above their threshold
Mastery rate	The proportion mastered
Average score	Mean evidence score
Evidence	How many pieces of evidence exist

There’s a Competency Mastery report in the certified catalogue, and the assistant can answer mastery questions directly for anyone holding permission to read competency progress. See Reporting.

One counting subtlety, because the two numbers differ legitimately: a learner’s progress counts the newest evidence per source (a retake replaces), while a summary counts raw evidence records. Both are correct for what they measure.

The outcome-gap card ignores competencies you’ve deactivated, so retiring a skill removes it from the gap analysis rather than leaving it as a permanent shortfall.

Reference

Concept	What it is
Framework	A named, reusable set of competencies, owned by one organization (or by the platform, in which case it’s read-only)
Competency	A single observable statement of ability, with a code and a mastery threshold
Mastery threshold	Required evidence + Minimum score %, set on the competency itself — not per mapping. Only Minimum score % is enforced for UI-created competencies.
Grouping levels	Subject → Grade → Domain; unfiled competencies sit in Ungrouped
Assessment attachment	A skill declared on an assessment (“Outcomes & skills”)
Question mapping	A link from one question to one of the assessment’s attached skills; drives the Tracking pill
Evidence record	A scored record against a competency for one learner. Written through the competencies API only.
Credential	Issued automatically when a competency reaches Mastered
Dossier	A verified export of a learner’s competency evidence, downloadable as JSON or CSV

Troubleshooting

A competency never reaches Mastered. Check it has evidence — evidence is written only when a graded attempt is released, not when it’s marked. If evidence exists, check the competency’s Minimum score %: mastery compares it against the learner’s evidence scores.

The mastery matrix, credentials gallery, and dossier are all empty. Evidence is written when a graded attempt is released. Check that attempts exist, that they were released rather than only graded, and that the assessment has competencies attached.

Raising “Required evidence” changed nothing. Expected — that field is not enforced for competencies created here. Only Minimum score % decides mastery.

I can’t see a platform framework I need. Platform frameworks are granted per organization. Ask Lurno to grant it to yours.

I can’t edit a framework’s competencies. It’s a platform framework, which is read-only for every tenant — the Edit controls aren’t hidden, they don’t exist for it. Use Create a copy to bring it into your organization, then edit the copy.

Every Add / Edit control is missing on my own framework too. You’re missing competency-authoring permission on the organization that owns it. Note that this check runs against the framework’s organization, not whichever one you’re currently viewing — whereas Create a copy is checked against the organization you’re copying into.

A competency landed in “Ungrouped.” It has no Subject / Grade / Domain values. Open the competency, set them, and it slots into the tree. If the dialog shows no Subject / Grade pickers at all, your organization has no curriculum reference data yet.

“Create a copy” fails with a size error. The framework is too large to copy in one request. Narrow the selection and copy in parts.

The skill picker on an assessment finds nothing. Search needs at least two characters, and it searches your organization’s frameworks plus platform-published standards. If you have no frameworks yet, create one in Competencies first.

The assessment says some skills have no mapped questions. That’s a warning, not a blocker. Open the Content view and use Map skills under each question so the Tracking pill reflects real coverage.