At Skills Builder Partnership, our mission is to ensure that one day, everyone will build the essential skills to succeed. Today, we are excited to share the first of several major updates rolling out to Skills Builder Benchmark.

Over the past few months, we have listened closely to feedback from educators, employers, and impact organizations using Benchmark across the globe. You asked for greater flexibility, deeper validation, and richer qualitative context when assessing essential skills. In response, we are introducing three new features designed to elevate how you build, measure and evidence essential skills.

While we have two more exciting updates coming in the next few weeks, today we are thrilled to launch our highly anticipated Directed Assessments feature.

Why we built Directed Assessments

We know that full 16-step assessments are ideal for establishing initial baseline strengths and weaknesses. However, taking a full length assessment repeatedly can create friction, especially when a learner or cohort is actively targeting specific growth areas.

To complement comprehensive Framework assessments, our partners wanted a targeted way to measure progress on specific focus areas. Directed Assessments solve this challenge directly. It is a flexible new feature that enables organizations to assign targeted evaluations focused purely on the specific skills and steps relevant to their current learning goals, customized for individual learners or entire groups.

Key benefits: Flexible, focused evaluation

Directed Assessments change how you track skill development over time by bringing focus, efficiency, and clarity to the assessment experience.

• Hyper-focused tracking: By measuring only the specific steps currently targeted for development, you eliminate evaluation fatigue and keep learners engaged.
• Streamlined workflow: Learners see a clear, uncluttered evaluation path focused strictly on their active learning goals, removing distraction and reinforcing immediate priorities.
• Powerful assessment pairing: Directed Assessments pair naturally with your baseline data. Organizations can use full baseline assessments to map overall strengths and development areas across all 16 steps, then deploy Directed Assessments at check-ins to track targeted progression over time.

How it works in practice

With Directed Assessments, Managers and Admins gain granular control over how skills are evaluated across cohorts:

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Target and assign: Select the exact skills and steps aligned to a specific project, curriculum module, or placement. Assign them to individual learners or entire cohorts in just a few clicks.

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Define the timeline: Set up initial, mid-point, and end of development cycle assessment milestones to build a complete picture of growth over a defined period.

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Track real-time progress: Monitor completion rates and "steps of progress" on a dedicated dashboard. Best of all, these targeted progress metrics are stored cleanly alongside baseline data, keeping your overall 16-step skill scores intact while proving the impact of your essential skills program.

See it in action

Want to see how simple it is to set up a Directed Assessment for your team or cohort? Watch our short walkthrough video below:

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Keep an eye out over the coming weeks for the next two releases in our Benchmark update series.

Log in to Skills Builder Benchmark today to set up your first Directed Assessment.