Psychomotor or Skill Domain Guide

Use this chart when the major topic or task is primarily concerned with acquiring and perfecting skills. These skills may be strictly speaking psychomotor, such as skate boarding, or they may be producing an art form or some other directly observable product. Academic works have both cognitive and skill elements. Writing a report, building a presentation, etc. are psychomotor skills, the thinking that underlies the final product is cognitive. While these two facets of academic work are closely intertwined try to separate them when writing educational objectives and assessments. For example a person may understand music theory, yet lack the physical coordination to play an instrument or be physically unable to write a musical score. On the other hand someone may be able to expertly play and instrument and invent great music for it, yet not even know the correct names of the notes.

Another way to look at this whole thing is to treat the skill level as adverbs modifying the verbs from the other domain charts. Yet another approach is to consider this to be the learner's quality of playing the epistemic game of loading an epistemic form. This would again be expressed as adverbs.

Level

If the learner must be able to…

Then use these key words or phrases
in objectives, assignments and evaluations.

1. Imitating

… observe a skill and attempt to repeat it, or see a finished product and attempt to replicate it while attending to an exemplar.

attempt
copy
duplicate
imitate
mimic

reproduce
respond
start
tries to
using a model

2. Manipulating

… perform the skill or produce the product in a recognizable fashion by following general instructions.

complete
do
follow

manipulate
play
perform
produce

3. Perfecting

… independently perform the skill or produce the product, with apparent ease, at an expert level.

achieve
automatically
excel
expertly

masterfully
with improvements
with refinements

4. Articulating

… modify the skill or product the product to fit new situations while maintaining nearly flawless perfection and showing great ease of execution.

adapt
advance
alter

customize
originate
with fundamental revisions
with great skill

5. Naturalizing

… automatically, flawlessly and effortlessly perform the skill or produce the product tailored to the situation.

naturally
perfectly

Some resources from which the above was adapted:
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/educ_school/seced/psycho.htm
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/educ_school2/docs/stai_manual/manual10.htm
http://gfb.cas.psu.edu/EdTech/psychomotor.htm
http://gfb.cas.psu.edu/EdTech/altpsych.htm
http://www.nedc.nrcs.usda.gov/pdf%20files/Psychomotor%20Performance%20Objectives.pdf

Chart first posted to the Internet June 16, 2002.

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