Name: AI’s Impact on Career Readiness: Teaching ‘Human Skills’
Uploaded: 2026-10-16T17:20:05.592Z
Duration: 1 h 4 min 8 s
Description: AI’s Impact on Career Readiness: Teaching ‘Human Skills’

Transcript for "AI’s Impact on Career Readiness: Teaching ‘Human Skills’": Good afternoon, everybody, or good good morning depending on where you are joining us from. Thank you all so much for being here today. We're really excited for this conversation. We appreciate you taking time out of your very busy schedules to join us for this hour for this conversation. My name is Shay Vance. As it is no secret to anybody who is in this Zoom room, artificial intelligence is really upending higher ed and is really making us all reconsider how to rethink the value proposition of a college degree and what skills to emphasize, in the age of AI. So I'm really interested in the conversation that we are going to have today. My name is Jay Vance. I'm a reporting fellow for the Chronicle of Higher Ed, primarily covering the intersection between AI and higher education. Today, the topic of AI and higher ed is a bit too broad to cover in one hour of Zoom webinar, but the specific topic we're gonna be tackling today is durable skills or human skills. You hear a lot of anxiety. You read a lot in the news about concerns that AI is going to replace various technical skills, thinking about especially things like computer science or math. But a lot of colleges in this moment are really starting to think about the skills that are going to last students a lifetime regardless of what kind of technological advances may happen in the meantime. So I'm really interested to and excited to introduce you to all of these panelists, and this conversation. We have a great lineup, but before we get started, I'm just gonna go over a few housekeeping notes. You can send your questions or comments into the q and a box. I plan to include a few audience questions, in the second half of this panel. So everybody here will have have an opportunity to to ask the panelists. We usually don't have time or we definitely won't have time to get to everybody's questions. But nonetheless, even if we don't get to your question, we're really interested in hearing your perspective on this. As a reminder, this panel discussion is being recorded, so we'll send an email with a link to the on demand version in a few business days. That email will also include some resources that are shared during today's conversation that are, I'm sure, going to be very interested to everybody who is, or interesting to everybody who's interested in this topic. Thank you so much to our sponsor, Acuity Insights Insights. My colleague, Ronald Barber, who is an editor at the Chronicle who leads our brand studio, is gonna do a seven to eight minute interview with Kelly Doerr from Acuity Insights Insights. She's a cofounder and a vice president of science and innovation at Acuity Insights. And after that, we're gonna return to our panel discussion. So I'm very excited to introduce you to all of our panelists to get things going. The three of you can can turn your cameras on. We have Eddie Watson who is the vice president for digital innovation at the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Eddie also directs the AAC&U Institute on AI pedagogy and the curriculum. We have Barb Kirchmeier, the director of general education and student success at the University of Idaho. And we have Steven Weber, who is the senior vice provost for undergraduate affairs at Drexel University. Steve chairs Drexel's, standing committee on AI. All three of them do a lot of work in AI and higher ed. All three of them think a lot about durable skill building and how colleges can best position themselves and best position their students for this moment. And I'm I'm very excited to to get going. So we're gonna start... I wanna get a sort of broad view of what's going on right now with AI and higher ed as it pertains to durable skill building. So I'll start with you, Eddie, to sort of get a lay of the land. Can you just talk a little bit about how AI is changing the way that colleges and educators think about workforce preparation in terms of the skills that they really value in students? Yeah. I think there's been a bit of an arc, you know, right, really. I mean, the the the notion of durable skills maybe emerged within sort of the HR world, maybe eighteen to twenty years ago where it was... They were no longer just interested in finding, you know, someone with a a degree and a good q... A grade point average or QCA, but then they began to also want candidates to be able to share evidence that they possess skills, durable skills, such as critical thinking or be able to work well on teams or whatever it may be. So that that was a bit of a challenge, right, for a for a candidate, especially someone just right out of college, to be able to sort of, like, create a portfolio of sorts that would display that they indeed possess those those skills. And then most recently, you know, we we saw that shift. And then most recently, AI has not necessarily upended that, but it's created maybe a third silo. I mean, if an employer is looking for an accountant, they still want someone with some accounting training, and, yes, you'd love for them to be able to talk well with clients and think critically, so all of those durable skills. But now we have this additional, silo that is AI literacy, broadly speaking, is a number of different ways to kind of think about it, whether it's AI competencies or AI literacy. And then as we're learning what AI can actually do within specific disciplinary silos, it's actually forcing many of us to rethink those durable skills and exactly what what durable skills are still very much needed. Are there new ways to think about those durable skills? Are some of them actually more important now than maybe they ever were, such as, you know, critical thinking? I mean, many employers say the most valuable skill that you could have to use AI well is actually to be a very strong critical thinker. So in many ways, it's actually amplifying the need for those durable skills that we've seen, in the past. But, you know, there are those maybe discipline specific skills within some disciplines such as technical disciplines where maybe that curriculum needs to be rethought a bit. So there's almost like there's three silos. Like, what you learn within the major, what maybe has historically been seen as the purview of the gen ed curriculum, so durable skills along with other things are located there. And now we've got this third silo that's teaching students to use AI well. However, that is also forcing us to rethink those first two silos as it were. So it's sort of dredging up some of this conversation that's been going on for for a longer time. I'm curious, Steven. You know, Drexel is a co op university, meaning the university helps set students up with full time jobs for six month periods during their time in college. What are you hearing from employers about the kinds of skills that they want to see in students? Maybe if you're sending students to go work and then you get feedback from employers about what they need to see more of or just what you're hearing when employers come to campus. I mean, what are you hearing in that sphere? Yeah. Thanks. So, you know, we are a co op school with over a hundred years of experience, and we and we do it very well. We pay very close attention to what the employers say. And, in in a sense, it's it's it's more of the same, like, in in a sense, the narrative has not changed. And specifically, what, a lot of our coop employers are looking for are those durable skills, which has been true for a while, especially given that our students first go on their coop, sometimes starting in their second year of study. So what we really try and do is make sure that they do have some of those critical skills like critical thinking, communication, etcetera. But to the point also that Eddie was making, like, now it has been amplified, I think, was to use his word. I agree with that. And that now there's also this expectation that the student would have this literacy, about artificial intelligence. And and some of the cognitive dissonance that the students face, I think, is particularly acute for students at Drexel University who do enter the workforce earlier than others is that oftentimes, not always, because, of course, it's a heterogeneous landscape in terms of AI adoption in the classrooms. But sometimes they're hearing AI bad, don't use it. It's going to hurt your learning. And then six months later, they're out in the workforce and it's like, well, of course, you're going to use AI. Why would you not? So I think that's a that's a challenge for us. So when we talk about listening to our co op employers, part of it is what do they hear, what do they want, but also I think surfacing that the message received by the students can be different between the university and the employer. And then Barb, maybe a similar question to you. Do you have anything to add to that? What are you hearing from employers at the University of Idaho, the graduates that you all send out to the workforce? How are you thinking about the skills that employers are evaluating right now as they pertain particularly to the AIH? Yeah. Sure. Well, you know, we know that seven of the 10 most requested skills in job postings are durable rather than technical. And we know that the five leading durable skills that are named in those positions are sought nearly five times as often than the leading technical skills. And I think that that continues to be true even as we add AI and that kind of AI silo into the mix. Right? And and because none of those particular durable skills belongs to a single major, teaching them, I think, is best distributed across a student's entire education as a means of helping those students understand how the application of durable skills varies by by context. Right? And I think that there's no better space for us to do that than in the general education space. To that point, the University of Idaho is working collaboratively with the other seven public institutions in the state of Idaho to figure out how to embed those durable skills within those general education courses specifically across disciplines and in all kinds of different ways of knowing areas. We've gotten to the point where we have included durable skills in our statewide gen ed education policy and to help faculty across the state better imagine ways to authentically embed those durable skills into their gen ed classes, we work to develop a press book published out of Boise State University that includes those assignments and lessons that are designed and tested by gen ed faculty across the state of Idaho, to help their colleagues figure out what, durable skills would work best in their classes and how they can make those connections for students. Particularly at the University of Idaho, we've worked really hard to help our gen ed faculty identify those durable skills that they've already been teaching in their gen ed classes for years and years and years, but they've just perhaps not ever named out loud for their students. Right? So to have those faculty call out those durable skills on their syllabus at the same time that they're calling out their AI, use policy. Right? So at the same time, they're saying it is important that you learn to think critically in this class. We're also calling out, and in this class, we are encouraging you to use AI in these specific ways. Or in in some cases, to Steven's point, we we are asking you not to use AI in in these specific contexts. Right? So what this means in actual practice is that we have, gen ed instructors now who are saying, here are the durable skills that we're going to be practicing in this class. And before we get started, we want you to reflect on, as individual students, why are these durable skills important to you, how do you think you will be using these in your other courses, and and and and wherever you go after university. So that by the end of the semester, the hope is that the faculty has called out these durable skills enough during class that students can identify which durable skills they practiced and be able to list specific contexts they have used those durable skills in. So that when we partner with our career services offices, those career services professionals can come and talk with students about, now you practice these durable skills in your gen ed classes. How can you talk about those intelligently on your written and in your in your oral presentations with, potential employers. Right? So I I think I think that the work that we're really trying to do is not just call out those durable skills and make them more transparent for students, but to help our... Help them practice them sometimes within the AI space, sometimes not. Right? But then be able to articulate those, as they they move out of the classroom and into industry. I wanna get back to that a little bit later about, the actual application of of durable skill building in the classroom and how colleges teach, record, and then measure durable skills. But I wanna... Steven, last time we spoke, you said something really interesting about durable skill building. You said your... Something along the lines of your undergraduate degree needs to hold relevance for you, not just for your first job, but for your last job. Can you talk about what that means? I think for a lot of people that might sound a little bit obvious, but I'm curious to hear your perspective on what that means sort of in the AI age and how how is Drexel applying that to its curriculum? I know you have the core competencies which are gonna be new next fall. Yeah. I I I was first confess. I mean, I was quoting someone. I remember who first said that, but that's that's false determined to me. I I I I believe in that, but it's not my my original statement. But... Yeah. So so... But, absolutely. I mean, one of the things... I think the contact that comment, Shay, was talking about the difference between an undergraduate degree versus, say, a certificate, a technical certificate. Right? So a technical certificate and there's not been in a pejorative sense, but it's primarily to get ready for the technology du jour in some specific segment or or niche. Whereas an undergraduate degree, if it's done properly, it really should be something that lasts you a lifetime precisely because you've been equipped with the durable skills to face any challenge. Now, that may be weak key to the parent shelling out private school private school tuition who is looking for their child to be able to land that first job. Right? So you do have to have that relevance industry. You do have to meet that bar. That's, of course, what all of us are trying to do. But if you're just trying to teach to twenty twenty five or twenty twenty six or twenty thirty even, I think you've kinda missed the mark. So with that in mind, what we've done at Drexel is highlight core competencies. That's very different from core curriculum. A core curriculum is kind of a model which you you do Western civ, you do foundations of literature. Right? And then again, really important models there. It's not the direction we've chosen to go. I don't mean to throw a shade on it, but we've chosen to a slightly different direction where what we're highlighting are the durable skills. We call them core competencies. There's three pairs of them for us. Inquiry and analysis, which is basically critical thinking and data information literacy, collaboration and integration, which is how do you work in a team? How do you work cross disciplinary boundaries in the workplace? And application and engagement. How do you go from learning to doing? How do you apply what you've learned into the real world? And our our framing of that, I think, is important to to mention in this context. So first, it is focused on durable skills that are universal. They are not discipline specific. We believe every Drexel graduate would benefit from these skills. However, that's not to say that they don't look differently in different disciplines. So for us, it makes more sense for business students to take at least some of these core competency classes taught from a business perspective and likewise for our design students and likewise for engineering students. That way you see what does inquiry analysis look like from a design perspective? What does it look like from a business perspective? And, maybe the the last thing I'll comment on before, I have to talk more about this, but I'll I'll see if the point is to just mention something that that Barb, mentioned that I really resonate with. I think she wrote or said reflection on the use of durable skills. And I just wanna underscore the vital importance of reflection. Our term of art that we're using at Drexel is meta condition. It's a fancy term. It just means thinking about thinking. But what is absolutely essential in my opinion, what we're trying to inculcate and deeply integrate into these core competencies is student reflection. Not just doing or learning, but thinking about doing and thinking about learning. Thank you. This idea of knowing what you know in an age where AI kind of knows everything. I'm interested... Eddie, I'm curious to hear from you. What are... This is something that, yeah, Barb and Steve have have both independently brought up is this idea of metacognition. Is this a trend that you are seeing at other colleges and universities as well? This trend of embedding in students the ability to not just critically analyze the text, but also critically analyze their own understanding of the text as a as a durable skill in the AIH? You know, I don't know if I would necessarily classify it as a durable skill. I think it's... And I don't know if I would necessarily say that there's a trend where more colleges are interested. I think it's something that higher education has long been interested in for decades. This notion of helping students better understand how they problem solve, what they actually know, you know, the whole notion of reflective practitioner, you know, a a a phrase that's been around for several decades, is something that many disciplines embrace. And I'm interested to hear from you, Barb. How is the University of Idaho specifically pivoting its gen ed curriculum in this in this AI agent? I know Steve had talked about the core competencies. What... How is how is the University of Idaho thinking about this in terms of durable skill building? Yeah. Well, wait. One of the things... And I've seen it come up a little bit in the the q and a as well. One of the things that we're trying to do is help students see the value of general education, period. Right? So so often, students come into our our degree programs, and they're super excited about what's happening in their majors. And then they have this other list of courses they have to take that they're not necessarily super excited about taking. And I have to admit that as an English major, when I saw I had to take two science courses and two math courses, I also was not particularly excited about taking those courses. And so what we're really trying to do is use durable skills as a way to help students understand the transferability of what they are doing in their general education coursework. So it might be challenging, for example, to convince me, an English major, to understand why historical geology is an important class for me to take and and to to be able to connect when I'm learning in historical geology to the types of work that I want to do, in my future as an English teacher. Right? But I am certainly learning skills and competencies in that historical geology course, which are completely transferable not only to my future career, but are also transferable to the other coursework that I am doing. Right? So what we're really trying to do is is use durable skills as a way to name, those transferable skills and competencies that students can then carry with them, to their next course, to their to their to their degree program, and then to learn to frame those in such a way that they can intellectually talk about the work that they have done and how they've built those skills on their resumes and their application materials so that they're moving away from having a list of skills that are things like I showed up to class on time and instead are able to talk about specific instances where they have been practicing leadership skills in their courses. And how does that really manifest in a classroom setting? How do you... What are what are some of the techniques that you see educators using that tend to work really well when when teaching students how to do that? Yeah. So one thing that I have seen a number of our of our of our faculty do as I was introducing this as a as a thing they might want to consider. And they're like, wow. I don't wanna really redesign my entire gen ed course just because you want me to think about durable skills. And so I really start by having those faculty walk through an exercise of here are the durable skills, which one of these are you already emphasizing and having students practice in your class, because you certainly are, whether or not you were aware of it, or had named it. Right? And so once they've identified those, I have them, call those those out for their students and then ask their students to do something with those durable skills throughout the class. So whether that is the faculty member creating an assignment where a student has to formally reflect on, what they... What they're doing in the classroom space or whether that is the faculty member asking students to, in their course evaluations, write about whether or not the durable skill that the faculty member had called out was actually practiced in class. Right? There are certainly examples where people have done more formal durable skills based assignments and have, to to one of the q and a questions actually included some of those durable skills in their course learning outcomes. So, you know, by the end of this course, you will have, further developed in your, ability to lead a small group. Right? And then part of the assessment for that course then becomes assessing that student's growth in that particular durable skill. That isn't happening just as often. Or maybe that that kind of formal adding it to the course objective isn't happening as often as the informal application of durable skills, but that is certainly one thing that we're starting to see. I am interested. I think this idea of measuring durable skills, or what some people think of as soft skills, is really interesting. Eddie, I know that the AAC and U has rubrics, for things like this. Will you tell me a little bit about how someone can actually go about measuring a student's progress when it comes to building something like teamwork or critical thinking? Yes. And it's it's an interesting process that brought us to these rubrics in and of themselves. So I'll sort of start with that. I've been answering some of the questions and shared the the list of essential learning outcomes that we have at AAC and U, but those were sort of a a matrix activity between employers and faculty from all disciplines and all types of institutions to collectively discern what do they value. And then once that list was developed, it was like, well, critical thinking, if you're talking to a physicist versus a philosopher, there's probably a very different conception of what critical thinking actually means. So we then took that list such as thinking about critical thinking and brought together faculty again from all fields and disciplines to have a conversation about, well, what are the sub dimensions of critical thinking? What what are the components that collectively, when brought together, means you are indeed a critical thinker? And in addition to coming up with those subdomains, in other words, defining critical thinking at a granular level, we created rubrics that could be used for scoring student work, and it includes... We've created a matrix for each one of these learning outcomes. So you've got critical thinking, the big thing, and then the row headings are all the sub dimensions. And then across the columns, it's descriptions of what student performance actually looks like at a given level for that subdomain. So at the... You sort of a benchmark or as you're entering college, what might we anticipate students' critical thinking skills might look like all the way through what what might we anticipate when they graduate or in their they complete a capstone experience or maybe even grad school. So our value work, aacu.org/value, the rubrics are all freely downloadable. They're open educational resources. We actually provide them for folks in both, PDF versions as well as DOCX versions because we anticipate... You get the rubric and you sit down with colleagues in your department, probably your definition of critical thinking doesn't match this broader definition. But, hopefully, it's like the rubric is 60 to 80% of the way there, and then you have a conversation about, well, what's missing or what do we not necessarily value in our conception of critical thinking. But, yeah, the the value system, as we call it, is often used. I mean, that value stands for the valid assessment of learning in undergraduate education. So, I mean, that's what the the project... The broader project's about. But using these tools to look for authentic evidence of student learning in work that students produce. So such as papers, projects, videos, whatever it may be. We're gonna kick it to the sponsor interview in a in a minute. But really quick, Eddie, I'm curious to hear from you how the... How AI has changed those... The way that you conceive of of measuring these skills on those rubrics. You know, I don't necessarily think that the rubrics themselves have changed, but I think the way that maybe individual faculty might be thinking about what's valued or most important. You look at those sub dimensions and it's like, well, maybe less of this since we see how, you know, a particular discipline or a particular set of employers is actually expecting AI to do that. So it's an opportunity then for, you know, faculty and individual departments, individual programs to make decisions regarding how this might evolve over time, you know, from from one academic year to the next. Great. Alright. We are going to pause for a few minutes. I'll ask our panelists to mute themselves and turn off their cameras, and I'll bring in my colleague Ronald who's going to do our sponsor interview. Thank you very much. We'll be back shortly. Thanks, Shay. I'd like to welcome Kelly Dore with us today. Kelly, thank you for joining, and thank you again to Acuity Insights for sponsoring today's virtual forum. Kelly, you have a really interesting background in that. Not only are you at Acuity Insights, but you... For a long time, you've taught and continue to teach at McMaster. So you have kind of this internal view of kind of what's going on in level, but then you also have this external view of, like, what is going on in the broader higher ed environment. So in our last talk, you had said something about how AI may not take jobs, but they may change the fundamental nature... Fundamental nature of jobs. When we think about how AI is changing kind of this nature of work, which human or durable skills do you think matter most for career readiness, and what have you learned about how those skills can actually be developed during college? Yeah. Ronald, first of all, thanks for having us. It's always such a thrill to get to join these conversations. You know, this is such a a big topic right now because I think there is a massive fear of AI taking jobs and things like that. And I think part of the exciting responsibility of colleges, university, and higher education in general is the opportunity to help prepare people for the changing nature of the workforce, as we're thinking about it. And that means some of the skills that we're used to teaching and preparing for might change and shift over time and that might change depending on some of the nature of the jobs themselves. But part of the reason we call these skills durable skills is that they come with us. They come with us through our different educational parts of our journey, whether that's in class or in internships or co ops and into the workforce and as we change jobs. These things like communication, leadership, and that can be big l... Small l leadership, teamwork, resiliency, critical thinking, empathy, all of these things that, you know, are... Feel like a little bit harder, to measure are actually becoming more and more important. And I think that's where we need to educate learners and and and sometimes faculty around why these attributes and these skills are actually really important and that they also help us predict success at the end of the day. I mean, I think we've always tended to measure academics and things because they're a little bit easier to measure. But the thing that we found is that you actually can measure these things in whether it's a a high stakes or a low stakes way. And when we talk about their impact and importance, in the workforce and as we prepare people for the workforce in higher education, if we can measure and nurture these attributes, we're preparing a much more workforce ready, skill set in our students. And that's what I think becomes really, really important is that we can measure these, we can develop them, and it becomes part of our responsibility. And I would say, actually, opportunity as higher educators to become thinking about how do we nurture these things and how do we develop them. And, unfortunately, in order to prioritize them, in order to make them matter, you sometimes have to count them. And that means assessing them, you know, whether anywhere on the spectrum of high stakes to low stakes summative, to formative, you know, and that allows us to create things like learning curves for people and understanding how they're measured, and how they're progressing on these skills that we know are becoming more and more important. It's great that you touched on this, Esphinte. You know, Barb had had mentioned before that of these durable skills, the majority of them can be tied to kind of the entire student's college journey, while they're on campus, which is something similar to kind of what you shared with me last time when you, talked about their steerable skills as more of a continuous thread across the student journey rather than as an isolated kind of isolated competencies. What would you... What would that look like in practice and how can institutions act... Assess students' growth without necessarily allowing the assessment to drive the learning itself? Yeah. I think, yeah, that's such a great question. And it's a hard thing to do, especially based on our historical experiences, because, you know, we heard from, I think, all the speakers talk about the importance of having this at... Across the learner journey, not just at specific points in time. The goal is to not have it in just one leadership course or one point in time where it's measured, but, really, a thread that continues through, so that we can see this because, really, human skills are are not, you know, a single point in time. They they need to be practiced repeatedly and assessed in a way where we can put people in increasingly complex context, create unique opportunities. Again, this is where I think schools have a unique opportunity to not just help people be workforce ready, but but doing that by creating a safe space to practice and develop these skills. So, you know, historically, we always tended towards that measurement of academics because it was easy. We knew how to do it. But really, as we sort of think about these durable skills, we have the opportunity to think about this longitudinal exposure of these skills. So thinking about how do we expose learners to situations around communication, collaboration, ethical reasoning, you know, conflict navigation, critical, thinking, all those things and give them meaningful feedback as well as they're developing these things. So thinking about, you know, how do we plan to within our curriculums, not just within a course, think about what is the thread. And we've heard that from some of the speakers that they're trying to build in. It doesn't become a tick box. It becomes an intentional development that they need to progress in in order to become workforce ready or or to benefit from their higher education degree. And what we need to think about is how we create these opportunities and what behaviors we're driving with that. We talked a lot about self reflection, which I agree is really important. But I've heard other speakers say, in the age of AI, you know, a self reflection exercise is not important because people just go to chat GBT or whatever, model they want and and create this 500 word essay for you. And so what it gives us the opportunity to do in higher education is actually be really intentional about what behaviors we're driving with activities or assessments that can nurture these skills. So instead of maybe just having them create an essay, having them talk in peers, pairs, with their peers about how these skills have helped change them. Because I think also when we talk about these skills, I think it was Barb who talked about the fact that we need to have them realize where these skills can become important and impactful in their future, of workforce and readiness. Let's say a university president or provost who is watching us today, is convinced that durable skills really need to be treated more intentionally at their institution, which I'm sure a lot of people will. What are the first things you would recommend that you do and kind of what common mistakes would you caution them against? I think, you know, a lot of people recognize that they're important, but I don't think we always take the time to make sure that they're measured properly or that we're very intentional. It is easy to create a tick box that a faculty completes that says, you know, I measured communication skills in this class. But really, it's much more important to say, well, how did you do it and how did you about... Engage in growth of communication skills in this class? So that, you know, it's not a tick box. And I say that because we actually have to support faculty in doing that because we didn't hire them based on their durable skills. We've hired them based on their knowledge or technical skills in the areas that they're teaching, but rarely are we bringing them in for durable skills. So how do we help them get there? And then I think to ensure that you're taking it seriously, you know, you know, you're not just doing tokenism in terms of measuring it because you can actually link it to important outcome, not just for the learners, but for your programs ROI as well. So what we can say is we need to think about how we're measuring it, how we're building it into our program with intentionality, and it can create a unique differentiator for your program. And that means you actually have to invest in it in that way. So thinking about how are you creating safe practice opportunities for the... How are you increasing the complexity of measuring these things over time, and how are you creating feedback opportunities, whether that's learning curves, growth opportunities, or things for your students and your faculty to allow them to engage in this in a robust way that really creates this opportunity to present your your college or university as a differentiator? You're creating a different type of workforce ready, learner. Well, thank you, Kelly, for sharing those insights. And thanks again for, a huge insights for sponsoring today's virtual forum. Shay, I wanna throw the conversation back over to you. Thanks so much, Ronald. Thanks... Thanks, Ronald and Kelly. Alright. Steve, Eddie, and Barb, you can all turn your cameras back on. I wanna open up this latter half here with a question, from the audience. This one's from Mike. Maybe Steve or Barb, one of you can take this. So if... He asks, if no one's domain is actually durable skills, how would we actually know if anyone is actually talking the same language when discussing it in curriculum development? Who are we looking toward to really be the field expert when it comes to durable skills? Would you like to go, Barb? Sure. I can I can give a a? An example of what we're doing, in in Idaho. And and I'll frame this as a... This is something that's happening across the state of Idaho. We're we're a pretty unique state in that we have a state board of education that oversees, all public education k through 20. So our board of regents for all of our four year institutions is the Idaho State Board of Education. And because of that, they can create education policy that, follows all of our of our, public institutions. So what we have done is we have kind of taken ownership of durable skills in the gen ed space. That is not to suggest that durable skills don't belong in in other areas, are within discipline specific courses. Of course, those durable skills are being practiced across everything. But for for our case, we've taken kind of ownership of that language within the gen ed curriculum. And so we are ensuring that commonality of language, and even examples of the types of activities and assignments and ways that we're phrasing conversations about durable skills and the transferability of durable skills are happening through our gen ed, committees, both our statewide gen ed committee, but then also our institutional gen ed committees. Now none of our institutions in Idaho have reached the point yet where we are asking faculty through regular curriculum processes to say English one zero two teaches to communication, leadership, and growth mindset. Right? Like, we haven't... We we haven't done that, and there is no plan to do that. But the hope is that by having these conversations in that gen ed space that we have that commonality of language and also the commonality of approach for for conversations about teaching ideas and then assessment of, learning in the durable skills space. I can also comment if you'd like. So, I think if I heard the question correctly, I'll turn it a little bit on its head. It's not that, it's... That no one owns durable skills. It's that everyone owns durable skills. So it is a responsibility of all of us. I was really interested to hear both Eddie and Kelly's discussions of assessment. And by the way, at Drexel with core competencies, we're huge fans of the AAC and U value rubrics. We are using our assessment mechanisms as adaptations of those. So we liberally, stole and adapted, those. We're very thankful for for that, resource. And... But but to the point, I think it does raise a real challenge because we are teaching core competencies in discipline specific ways across every discipline, we nonetheless have an institutional challenge of how do you assess that using a consistent framework. And our approach to this is, in our view, somewhat natural. We have learning objectives for the individual core competencies, and then in a specific disciplinary course, you're gonna have discipline specific learning objectives. Now the assessment piece then looks something to be a little bit granular about it. Well, you identify the components in the grade book that best correlates with the learning objective for the competency, and then you correlate all of those together to get an overall institutional effectiveness of that. So, the last thing I'll just say is, and this is also brought out, I think, in both in Kelly's comments and Eddie's comments, it just can't be flash in the pan one and done. If you just introduce these durable skills in the first year or in the second year, and then you never mentioned them again, they're not going to stick. So, our approach to that has been to have what we call multiple levels of competencies. And specifically, not only are there three competencies, there's three levels. There's introductory, reinforcement, and mastery. And we look using AAC and U value rubrics, how are students doing in each of those levels, in each of the competencies as they progress with their education. I'm curious, Eddie, how is... Obviously, sort of the elephant in the room here is also that the skills that one might need to utilize AI tools themselves are gonna be important in a lot of, career tracks. Can you talk a little bit about how higher ed is or maybe should be thinking about AI literacy as a skill in itself? Yeah. So there's there's probably maybe 10 different AI literacy frameworks or models that have emerged, you know, just in the last four years. I think the first one was was maybe from Barnard College, and one of the most recent ones, was from the US Department of Labor. So there's some really good guidance, but sort of a generalized AI literacy, sort of like what anyone really needs to know maybe leaving college. But that doesn't necessarily speak to the discipline specific issues. And what we're really seeing now through our institute on AI pedagogy and the curriculum and and just some some of the other reach out that we that we have from institutions reaching out to us, there's there's a lot of discipline specific work that's beginning at this point to further define or refine the current AI literacy models for a specific context. So what does it mean to be AI literate if you're see... Seeking a career in public health? Well, there there would be some commonalities for sure, but there's also some very specific practices. There's also maybe some legal implications regarding how one might use AI within, say, health fields, for instance. And so while we have AI literacy models, sort of generalized models that are out there that maybe we might think about incorporating as institutional learning outcomes or maybe gen ed learning outcomes, the work around discipline specific iterations or definitions of AI literacy is only just now beginning. Really, just maybe over the last year have I seen such work emerging. Do you think there... Is there such a... Maybe this is too theoretical of a question for a panel like this. But is there such a thing as durable AI literacy given that it it changes so much? That is a theoretical question, isn't it? Given how, you know, time is passing, and we're not even sure if we we feel we're 100% confident that we have an AI literacy model that matches what students are going to experience whenever they enter the real world. So a durable AI literacy model. And I, so I I struggle with that for multiple reasons. But I guess while I don't know that... I would say that, like, any of the frameworks we see right now, actually, it will be a perfectly applicable and save three years. I also say that we we can't not do anything. You know, I feel like we have to be preparing our students. We... You know, we have students that are gonna graduate in six months or so from all of our institutions and actually even this December. Right? So we have to be doing something to serve those students. And I think, ultimately, we have to, you know, make our best guesses that we have these thought leaders that have put put out AI literacy models. We also have employers that we're in touch with on our individual campuses or within our individual disciplines. We also have students that are on internships right now. When they come back at the beginning of the spring semester, ask them questions. So what did you experience during the fall semester? Were there specific tools or skill expectations? And I think that can inform really an agility around the learning outcome that is AI literacy that maybe we haven't experienced with another, learning outcome before. Like, I feel like, you know, as we have defined critical thinking, let's say, we can kind of replicate that from one semester to the next to the next. I think that that's probably not a best practice around AI literacy, whether we're talking an institutional learning outcome or a discipline specific iteration or version of that learning outcome. I think we have to be really vigilant, talk to our students, talk to students who just graduated, you know, this past spring. You know, have... What are they... What have they experienced in the world of work? But that could inform what we might actually teach in the spring semester for those students that are about to hit, the job market, at... In the spring and summer. Steve, I asked you earlier about what you hear from employers. I'm curious to hear what you think... What you hear from students, who are coming back from their their since, at their full time jobs, through the co op at Drexel. What do you hear from them about what they find that, you know, they've learned in the classroom at Drexel that they find they can really apply to the workplace? I think what they can apply to the workplace might might be a little bit job specific and discipline specific, but what is common in my experience in the classroom and and talking with their students is a great deal of anxiety. There's enormous anxiety among students about what AI is going to do to the economy, to the world of work, to, how they prepare themselves to be well positioned, in that world. And, and even in the classroom, great anxiety about, not... And I don't think there's as pervasive a temptation to, bypass every learning opportunity by using AI. I don't think that's the narrative at all in my experience. I think our students are very thoughtful and realize they need to learn this. But rather, there's a perception, well, I wanna learn this. I don't want to use AI to bypass my learning, but I'm worried that all of my classmates will, and therefore I feel a temptation to do so. So I think that's that's kind of the more acute problem. To to speak about frameworks for AI literacy, I mean, I think there's a lot of value in all of those, frameworks. Like Eddie said, they proliferate and there's many of them. I I just don't know that it's it's the, the core issue, from my thinking is not what are the components of AI literacy per se, but rather the very pervasive problem that I think most... And I'm speaking now about, like, incoming 18 year old students primarily. Most 18 year old students are gonna face is, how do I make sure that I don't use that big red button that can answer any hard thing I'm asked to do just by pressing? It's just always right there. And that's a really big temptation. You know, you probably all saw this MIT report that came out a couple of months or so ago, and the phrase that caught the eye of the media, I think, for good reason is the very compelling phrase of cognitive surrender. That's the concern. So I think rather than focus on what constitutes the exact components of AI literacy, I think I... My focus is more on how do we address that issue. We have, I have... There's a question here from Carla that I'm interested, to ask. Maybe this is a good question for you, Barb. She writes, I would think the durable skills are those that are the NACE competencies, the National Association of Colleges and Employers competencies, teamwork, critical thinking, communication, etcetera. Using AI, which I would think falls under using technology, can put a wrench in learning but can also complement those durable skills. It is the abuse of AI that is getting in the way because it allows students to complete assignments without having to do the work. They can even do metacognition using AI. How do we communicate the ethics of appropriate use of AI? Yeah. I think that's a really big question. Right? Like, how do we communicate the ethics of the use of AI? And I think so much of that is is dependent on how they are being... How students are being encouraged to or not to consider the use of AI by those who they consider to be mentors. Right? Both academic mentors and then also mentors in the workspace. So I I think that in some ways that that some of our durable skills like critical thinking and creativity and character and those sorts of things might be inroads to having those conversations about the ethical use of AI. In the capstone class I taught last spring, I I I did not give any sort of parameters around the use of AI in in the class. And it was a professional writing capstone course where, we we did things like grant writing, which can be done fairly easily if you feed the right prompts into the AI. You can get some very nicely, drafted, grant language. Right? But part of what I had students do in that course was have these exact conversations. When did you choose to use AI, and how did you make that decision as an individual, as a professional, and and as somebody who has concerns about the ethical use of AI? And so we we spend a lot of time kind of talking it out. I I think that AI literacy and and thirty years ago, right, like, computer literacy, all all of these things have have... These technologies and the technological advancements that we've seen, through through... At least through my career have always had us question, what is the ethics of applying these these new technologies, these shortcuts? Right? When I was a very brand new TA teaching first year writing, we were talking about spell check and whether or not we should be allowing students to use spell check instead of having a conversation about why is correct spelling something that we're concerned about in this in this particular context. So I don't think I have a very good answer to your question, but I do think that having real conversations and calling these things out, with our students and saying there are ethical dilemmas here. Let's talk about them, give students permission to to think critically about what AI is and how their use of AI does or does not meet what their goals are. I'm curious to hear from you, Steven. What kind of conversations are you having with faculty as you work to pivot the curriculum at Drexel? What what role do... What role can faculty play or what role do faculty play in deciding what direction to take the curriculum in when it comes to these durable skills? Yeah. Well... And like every university I know of, the faculty, they own the curriculum and the faculty decide the, use of AI in the classroom. And we were early out, I think, relatively speaking in our first AI, policy on its use in the classroom to emphasize that point. It is the discretion of the faculty member. And I still believe that fundamentally is very much the right call. But what's also been interesting, I should just say one more thing about that, which is you have the discretion to determine the use or misuse of AI in your class. However, you also have the obligation to be very clear with the students about what that is. Right? And that's probably the new part. If you don't offer the clarity, you can't fault students for violating what you assume were, student terms of use. Now that's all fine and good, but now you have to flip it and look at it from the student's perspective who has five, six classes. And, a bewildering and confusing, model of policies of how they can use AI in different settings. Right? So one of the things that was mentioned in the MIT report was this idea of a of a taxonomy. Right? That, you have a clear label. It... It's almost like a nutrition label of sorts. Right? So I think the the text on it was presented in the report was, AI friendly is green and AI with moderate use is yellow and AI, limit... Very limited is red and then blue would be AI mandatory use. So, you know, I think that is, there's a lot of virtue to that. I'm not saying that taxonomy is perfect and might not be right in all cases, but there's some value in that. And the other part of this conversation, I think, is to say that, whereas there is traditionally a very large, gap in training and expertise between faculty and students in many cases, the faculty feel very comfortable being in charge of the classroom instruction. That gap is narrower and in some cases reversed because not all faculty are as fluent with AI as are the students in the classroom. So we have also had to focus on talking about that narrative of, you know, how do you, offer the training that you need, the support that you need, the colleagues you need to help you get you up to speed. So that... That's something that we've been having a conversation about. So we've talked about, you know, sort of teaching these durable skills in the classroom and having students do some self reflection, maybe using these rubrics to measure these skills. Eddie, I'm curious to hear from you. How can students actually go to their employers and show them something that has proven that they learned to critically think or learned to resolve conflict or learned to collaborate in college? I mean, is there is there a micro credentialing sort of equivalent here or how can a degree really reflect those types of skills? Well, I guess there's multiple paths. I mean, it was brought up in one of the questions in the q and a about, micro credentials and certificates, and I think that's definitely a path forward possibly badging. But it's like, how much do employers actually value those? And there's increasing valuing or trust of those credentials, but maybe that's not not the only path that a student might pursue. I mean, another path would be an ePortfolio, you know, where the student collects their best work over time and has reflections built, to sort of suture together. Like, why are these five pieces of work from my major... Why do they exemplify my skills within the major or my durable skills as well. Of course, one of the challenges though in the age of AI is might a student leverage, AI to create elements that they would then place within an ePortfolio. So at this point, you know, it's like, what what are employers trusting? And I would really encourage those that have boards for their departments or for their college or their university to pose these kinds of questions to employers. Like, what are they looking for? What do their HR offices search for that would indeed show evidence of the durable skills that they're that they're looking for? I mean, you know, when... Depending on different surveys that you look at, there's one that said that, like, hiring managers, the main thing they're looking for is someone that can carry on a conversation with them, you know. But that's very much an interview skill. Right? Like, to be able to sit down, make eye contact, answer questions, be able to display your your your knowledge, but you you, again, have made it to the point of an interview to be able to have the opportunity to do that. So it's like, well, how do you get to that interview point? And so it is often documentation in the form of either credentials or sharing examples of your best work. Maybe this is a good question for you, Barb. This came up a little bit in our in our conversation before the panel. Thinking about how, career services comes into all of this. I I myself am a recent... Relatively recent graduate of college and think about this a lot about how brutal the, field is right now trying to trying to get an entry level job. I mean, what do you tell students or maybe what a career services tell students about, you know, proving their capabilities in these sort of soft skill areas to to employers? Yeah. I think I think, like, what Eddie was talking about, helping students understand how to, highlight those skills that they have that they have earned, whether that's through a portfolio, a larger portfolio that they can, attach with application materials or that's through some kind of credential is certainly one way that we can do this. But I think, having career services folks work with students from the time that they're freshmen, on strategizing, how they're gonna build their professional identity, is certainly something that I think we can do a better job at. Right? If we can get those career services folks working with students as as freshmen who are taking gen ed courses where they are practicing some of these durable skills and giving them advice on how they can name those skills, what what what is readable on a resume, what what counts as evidence, right, that they have somehow acquired practice and maybe in some cases mastered a particular durable skill. I think that... That's one thing that we can do a better job at. And then having that that that check-in point with students throughout their time at university so that by the time they're in a capstone sort of class, they have that that kind of employment package ready to go that they have been honing with a career professional throughout their time is is also important. So I I think that that career services can have a... Can play a pretty big part here. And whether or not we're using NACE competency language or durable skills language, I think there's quite a bit of overlap there. But I I I think that there is a partnership there that is sometimes lacking that would be who best to to better develop for our students' sake. What are some what are some questions or topics that that we didn't quite get to today about durable skill building in the AIH that I didn't ask about that we should talk about? I I mean, I I have thoughts on this. Very broadly, you know, is is a simplification reduction for sure, but it's kind of two traditional aspects to university education, and you might think of those as knowledge and learning, like, what I know and what I'm able to learn. Right? And and I think the balance of those two things has shifted over the last hundred years or so, and it's continuing to shift. I mean, that that shift is accelerating under AI. It is, of course, important that you know some things about your field. And if you don't know basic facts about accounting, you have a hard time in an accounting position. On the other hand, I would also say, especially in an age of AI where any piece of knowledge is at your fingertips and at anyone's fingertips, what you're really looking for is that ability to learn. And, you know, I'm in a... My background is electrical engineering. It's the technical field and very specific technical skills. On the other hand, while those things are important, I think it's also almost equally important that the students go through repeatedly the exercise of doing hard things and proving to themselves they can do those hard things. When they leave, they are learners and they've conquered a 100 hills, and now they're ready to apply that same confidence in the workforce. So that... That's my perspective on one of the things that maybe is shifting in terms of the balance of what you get out of an education at university. Eddie, I'm curious to hear from you on that note of teaching students to do hard things in an age where everything is at your fingertips. How how do you how do you conceive of that in the AI AI age? I think it's easy for students to kind of think, well, if I wanna be doing this in the real world, why do I have to... You know, if I can use AI in the real world or the world beyond college, why is it that I can't use it now? I think one of the things that we need to do a better job of communicating with our students is that it's not... College isn't about products. It's about process. It's about learning and recognizing that that's actually a different goal. Like, learning how to do things is a different goal than to having a final product. And, of course, certainly in the real world, it's largely about product and almost never about process. Like, how did you come to have these sales figures, or how did you come to put together this press release? It's like, no. You have really good numbers. You... And a really good press release. But in college, that that certainly... The assignment is how we have evidence that you have developed skills and that you can do this work. But, actually, it's it's... What we're trying to focus on really in colleges is the work itself. So, you know, telling students, like, no. You can't use AI on this because you can't... You don't really possess the skills to be a collaborator with AI at this point. You you need to develop foundational skills, and that's why you can't use AI because you need to do the hard work of developing these skills so that you can be a good collaborator with AI, to be competent at reviewing AI's work before you might actually let it out into the real world. So helping helping students recognize that there's a there's a difference in what we're trying to do in terms of education, versus versus product. And often, you know, some faculty may be using AI themselves for their own teaching purposes. And to be honest, that's a that's a different goal as well. They're using it to improve the quality of instruction possibly as opposed to the process of instruction. Right? I mean, they might be circumventing their own professional development by using AI, but they might end up with a better product and their job is to help students be better learners. So I think that that's just one thing we need to make really clear that there's there's differences in why maybe a faculty member might use AI when students aren't allowed to or why people in the professional world are allowed to use AI when when students aren't allowed to on a given assignment or even within a given course. Well, Eddie, Barb, and Steve, thank you so much for your time today. This is a great conversation. Thank you to our sponsor, QD Insights. And thank you to everybody who who came and and watched this. We really appreciate it. Thank you for all your questions and insights. We can never get to all of them, but I hope we we got to a good deal, and we do read all of them, afterwards. So so all of those really will be taken to mind. Just a reminder, Ian said it in the chat, but today's session was recorded, and we'll be sending that out in an email, the on demand version email in a few days. I'm Shay Vance with the Chronicle of Higher Education. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you.