Lydia Liu’s Keynote

Power Skills: Unlocking Potential for the Future of Work

The life cycle of technical skills has greatly shortened due to rapid technological innovations and new knowledge generation. With all the unknowns it is almost impossible to predict all the technical skills required ten years from now. However, power skills such as lifelong learning, coachability, communication, and collaborative problem solving can help individuals acquire new learning, generate innovative solutions for novel problems, and navigate new work settings. As the global workforce shifts from rigid academic pedigree to skills-based evaluation that recognizes multiple educational pathways, being able to demonstrate skills that are relevant, transferable, and measurable becomes critically important. Many skills taxonomies have been proposed to categorize skills but they vary in quality and research evidence. In addition, insufficient assessment exists that offers valid and reliable measures for many of the newly defined skills. Direct evidence of skills acquisition from assessment is essential for skills documentation and demonstration. In this seminar, I will discuss the significance for focusing on power skills as enablers for individuals' future success, what key power skills are in terms of definitions and key dimensions, how assessment can be designed, developed, analyzed, and validated, and current initiatives and research that leverage power skills to help unlock workforce potential for individuals, particularly the ones from underserved backgrounds.

About Lydia Liu

Dr. Ou Lydia Liu is Principal Research Director at ETS and a globally recognized expert in the assessment of critical skills and competencies in higher education and the workforce. She has also managed large-scale grants awarded by government and private funding agencies in the U.S. and international countries including India, China, and Korea. Dr. Liu has authored and coauthored over 90 peer-reviewed journal articles, research reports, and book chapters in the fields of applied measurement, higher education, and science assessment. Her research has appeared in Science, Nature Human Behavior, Educational Researcher, and other influential outlets. She has delivered over 100 invited seminars and peer-reviewed conference presentations domestically and internationally. Dr. Liu received the 2019 Robert Linn Memorial Lecture Award and the 2011 National Council on Measurement in Education Jason Millman Promising Measurement Scholar Award in recognition of her original and extensive research in learning outcomes assessment in higher education and K-12 science assessment. Dr. Liu holds a doctorate in Quantitative Methods and Evaluation from the University of California, Berkeley.


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