As AI evolves at an unprecedented pace, there is a renewed focus on "future-ready" skills — the durable human competencies that will remain valuable regardless of technological shifts or automation. International frameworks, such as the OECD Learning Compass 2030 and the WEF’s Future of jobs report, have identified a set of priority skills, both highlighting the same core competencies, including critical thinking, collaboration, and creative thinking. While these skills have been considered essential long before the rise of AI, they are now becoming more critical than ever.Today we are sharing Vantage, a research experiment for assessing future-ready skills by leveraging generative AI to create conversations in simulated environments. Developed in partnership with pedagogy experts and researchers from New York University, Vantage is designed to offer high school and college students a sandbox environment for practice and validated assessment, built with the same systematic methodology traditionally used for core academic subjects, such as math or science. Vantage is now available in English for sign up on Google Labs.
Measuring what's difficult to measure
At the heart of any effective learning process is feedback and assessment, both essential for individual growth and effective teaching. In global education systems, it is often the case that what is measured is what is taught.Future-ready skills, however, are notoriously hard to measure. Typical tests are too rigid to capture people's thought processes and interactions and they are far removed from how these skills are used in the real world. While testing these skills in real human interactions would be ideal, it is also too resource-intensive and hard to standardize and grade consistently across many students. For instance, how would you fairly assess conflict resolution if a group never disagrees, or the ability to build creatively upon each other's ideas if they settle on the first one that comes up?Our research team set out to discover how to assess students’ future-ready skills using a scalable, validated approach that could empower educators to align lessons with these skills and support student growth.
