Using AI to Power Career Navigation Tools for Adult Learners: A Conversation with Future Finder Challenge Prize Winners
In an effort to assist adult education practitioners and adult learners with career navigation, Luminary Labs, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), launched the Future Finder Challenge — a $1 million dollar challenge to reimagine career navigation for adult learners. The Department invited innovators, strategists, developers, user-centered designers, and educators — to develop career navigation tools to improve the career navigation experience. The workforce and its requirements are rapidly shifting. To thrive in this dynamic landscape, qualifications and skills are no longer enough. Career navigation services — inclusive of Artificial Intelligence (AI) — help people understand, choose, and prepare for career opportunities. Technology has the potential to elevate existing career navigation services, expanding access for all adult learners across the United States. To further support States and Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) providers, OCTAE invited the Future Finder Challenge prize winners — Gladeo and Workbay — to guest post emerging career navigation technologies and the rationale for leveraging AI to support digital career navigation while also sharing insight around overcoming obstacles and balancing the investment of AI in adult education.
Across the country, educational technology innovators are leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to better support teachers and students — and adult education is no exception.
In September 2022, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education launched the $1 million Future Finder Challenge to reimagine career navigation for adult learners. Challenge grand-prize winner, Gladeo, and runner-up, Workbay, have been using AI in their digital career navigation tools designed to support the unique needs of adult learners.
Gladeo, for example, uses AI to help learners identify potential career pathways based on their previous work experience, skills, personality traits, interests, and the available jobs within their regional job markets. Workbay similarly uses AI to improve its career matching algorithms, as well as to cross-reference the information gained through user intake interviews with skills required by in-demand jobs. And both companies use AI to support user accessibility (accessible technologies, not access), from generating translated video captions to powering internal chatbots that can assist users in navigating each platform.
With the possibilities of AI top of mind for many, the OCTAE challenge team sat down with challenge prize winners, Gladeo (Michelle Cho, CEO) and Workbay (Mary Hayes, CEO and Alice Hayes, President), for a conversation about AI and the future of career navigation. Their perspectives make clear that while there are some real career navigation opportunities in AI, understanding the context of users’ lives, as well as their actual needs, is crucial to developing truly impactful platforms.
What are the biggest opportunities and risks involved in using AI to support adult learners’ career navigation journeys?
Mary Hayes: AI can help make a more level playing field in the way that assistive devices do for all of us. A heavier hammer lets me work construction right beside someone with a heavier arm. AI can help to adjust and raise us up — as long as we’re writing algorithms that are inclusive of diverse perspectives.
For example, vocabulary is a huge part of our ability to communicate and succeed in the workplace. AI can be our guide on the side to help translate our ideas. If English is your second language, AI can help ensure that the job application language you use isn’t impacted by your second language, often referred to as your L2.
That said, since we use a training corpus of past experience, AI can also replicate past biases. For example, an algorithm for an applicant tracking tool could discount anyone who graduated from a women’s college, just because that algorithm had noticed that people who graduated from women’s colleges didn’t get promoted.
Michelle Cho: AI is really good at making things more accessible. Not just with language translation, but also supporting accessibility tools like text to speech. AI is also great at taking content or information and making it customizable. In Gladeo’s case, an adult learner can ask specific questions about the content and information on our website. An AI chatbot is using our career information to answer learners’ questions. That way they don’t have to sort through the “wild wild west” of the internet.
At the same time, AI is not a human, so it doesn’t have cultural sensitivities. I also think more generally there is a risk in people over-relying on AI and not developing the broader skill sets employers are looking for.
What shouldn’t AI do or replace in the partnership between career navigators and adult learners?
Michelle Cho: Helping learners believe in themselves. It’s educators and career navigators who provide that human aspect. AI can’t see you for who you are. It can’t look you in the face and say, “you can do this,” or “you have so much value.”
Mary Hayes: AI must not replace hope, value, respect, and our investment in the human worker — because we’re still a long way from replacing an extraordinary human being with AI. Yet investment seems to be flowing there with a single-minded focus. I hope that we can instead invest in the people who support adult learners: the educators, the career counselors, the workforce counselors, the vocational rehabilitation counselors, the corrections officers, and the reentry counselors. Before we jump to build robots, we need to unlock the potential of the millions and millions of American workers who are unemployed, underemployed, or sidelined from the economy because their gifts and talents are not being fully realized.
Alice Hayes: I also think there was once a lot of talk about AI replacing the frontline worker, say, five years ago. And people such as lawyers were not worried. The truth is that AI can do a really good job of replacing analytical skills. But it’s still a long way from walking into an apartment, seeing that an HVAC system is broken, and figuring out what tool to apply. Those skills need to be valued, appreciated, and invested in.
Looking ahead: Ensuring that AI creates a positive impact
Gladeo and Workbay’s experiences emphasize that integrating AI into adult education will come down to the same considerations as integrating any other technology: understanding and contextualizing the needs of real users (i.e., humans) and to their benefit. And no amount of AI can — or should — replace the relationship between a learner and educator; this human connection remains central to the success of adult education.
As innovators leverage AI to build impactful career navigation tools, they should consider the extent to which educators and learners are ready to make the most of those tools. “On a practical level, our educators need professional development,” said Mary Hayes. “I think there needs to be a massive influx of time, money, and resources into professional development in AI for educators.” In addition, underinvesting in learners’ digital literacy could have severe consequences. As Michelle Cho put it: “If you think there’s an opportunity gap now, a lack of training in AI will only widen it.”
Ultimately, Gladeo and Workbay’s digital career navigation tools demonstrate that, when integrated responsibly and with the needs of end users in mind, AI can empower learners to take control of their own career journeys.
To learn more about both Gladeo and Workbay, visit the Future Finder Challenge website.
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