As someone who straddles the worlds of higher education and learning and development, I am deeply concerned about how to better respond to the future of work.
Recently, my colleagues and I published our review article exploring future of work skills and connecting them with the assessments to build them in the context of continued technological disruption, the rise of generative AI and the ongoing fracturing of the employee-employer relationship with the proliferation of the gig economy. We explored four key things:
Key skills and mindsets required for the future of work
Technological, economic and other factors transforming the future of work and learning
Role of curriculum and instructional design to create opportunities for learners to develop and practice future of work skills
How postsecondary institutions can be robust sites for aligning skill development and assessment design
Two key highlights are: identifying the top 10 future of work skills and a call for a national future of work skills framework!
Read more in the attached blog article for more highlights!
Some key findings:
First: there seems to be a great deal of agreement that is no comprehensive list of future of work skills out there. However, from our review, there are certain patterns that emerge with the following skills making the top 10. In alphabetical order, these are:
collaboration
communication
creativity and innovation
critical thinking
cross-cultural competency
decision-making
judgment
learning and willingness to learn
problem-solving
social intelligence/perceptiveness
Second: The disruptions that we are dealing with, from automation, generative AI, to the "decoupling" and fragmentation of the employee-employer relationship, represented by the gig economy and alternate work arrangements, create greater uncertainty and inequality. At the same time, there is potential for increased collaboration and interdependence, between technology and humans, requiring mindsets that emphasize adaptability, flexibility and creativity.
Third: Educators can respond by creating learning environments and assessments that support the development of these skills and mindsets, including leverage both digital tools and enhancing immersive and applied learning experiences, such as community-engaged learning. In the latter, opportunities to practice collaboration, communication, problem solving, social intelligence and other salient future of work skills are developed.
Fourth: Postsecondary institutions, including polytechnics, with their traditional focus on work-integrated and applied learning, are valuable sites for assessment design with future of work skill development. While career readiness and work-integrated learning is deeply woven into all sorts of curricula, there needs to be greater attention as to how these practices help develop future of work skills in measurable ways, one of which can be done through assessment design. However, in Canada, at least, there is no national future of work skills framework to provide guidelines for postsecondary institutions to clearly communicate learners, educators, and employers how a particular program offering develops specified future of work skills.
On another note, aligning learning assessment design to future of work skills development need not stop in higher education. It's also necessary in workplace learning and development to ensure workers across various environments are given opportunities to develop and practice future of work skills.
Here's a link to the article: https://jipe.ca/index.php/jipe/article/view/216/121
Lastly; here's a collaborated image created between me and Copilot to illustrate the 10 future of work skills:
Thanks to my co-authors Carri-Ann Scott, Adam Sandford, Ph.D, OCT, Laura MacDiarmid, and Victoria Chen at the University of Guelph-Humber and to Humber Research & Innovation and the staff at the Journal of Innovation in Polytechnic Innovation.
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