Special Section on Advancing 21st-century Professional Competencies with Learning Analytics in the Age of Generative AI

2025-02-18

EDITORS:

Shane Dawson, University of South Australia, Australia
Olga Viberg, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, oviberg@kth.se
René Kizilcec, Cornell University, United States of America
Abhinava Barthakur, University of South Australia, Australia, abhinava.barthakur@unisa.edu.au
Ryan S. Baker, University of Pennsylvania, United States of America

AIMS & SCOPE

The 21st century has seen the emergence and increased importance of a range of new professional competencies necessary to succeed in rapidly evolving workplaces. Pressures of globalization and technological progress demand a workforce equipped with 21st-century competencies across a range of industries (Li, 2022; Tushar & Sooraksa, 2023). Employers increasingly seek graduates who demonstrate not only foundational knowledge in their fields but also a diverse range of domain-agnostic competencies, including critical thinking, computational thinking, applied problem-solving, collaboration, adaptability, digital literacy, and media literacy, among others. These competencies enable individuals to navigate uncertainty, innovate solutions to complex problems, and contribute effectively to team-based environments (OECD, 2023).

The significance of 21st-century competencies is underscored by their alignment with professional standards and employability frameworks developed by industry bodies and educational policymakers (Li, 2022). Mastering these competencies is key for graduates to enhance their career prospects and sustain long-term professional growth. Simultaneously, organizations benefit from a workforce that can respond flexibly to changing demands, foster a culture of continuous improvement, and drive organizational success. This raises the pressure on educational institutions to develop robust strategies for embedding, supporting, and evaluating these professional competencies within their curricula (OECD, 2023).

A quarter into the 21st century, educational institutions still have not fully incorporated ways to foster these competencies into their curricula to help students and graduates prepare for the workplace (OECD, 2023; Buckingham Shum & Deakin Crick, 2016). The lack of shared definitions and incomplete understanding of how to nurture their development in different contexts have challenged efforts to reform curricula (OECD, 2023). These challenges are further exacerbated by the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and the anticipated ramifications of new forms of automation on the labour market and the broader economy. The emergence of new literacies, such as AI literacy and privacy literacy, also highlights the need for a reimagined approach to education that enables learners to thrive in a future shaped by ever-faster technological innovation (Kovanovic et al., 2024). This necessitates a deeper exploration of how competencies should evolve to remain relevant in the face of unprecedented changes and how assessments and support mechanisms within the curriculum can be redesigned to foster students’ progress in developing these competencies.

The Learning Analytics community has long been invested in research into 21st-century competencies, as evidenced by the two special issues published in this journal on the topic (see Joksimovic et al., 2020; Buckingham Shum & Deakin Crick, 2016). By leveraging multimodal data, learning analytics has mitigated some of the barriers to measuring these competencies and their dynamic development over time (Kovanovic et al., 2024). Learning analytics has made significant strides in tracking learner progress, identifying skill gaps, and providing actionable feedback to support the growth of these competencies. However, the integration of GenAI opens new avenues and challenges, particularly in analysing unstructured, textual, and multimodal data and fostering the development of competencies in educational and workplace settings. Understanding the intersection of learning analytics and GenAI is crucial to advancing the assessment and development of 21st-century competencies, offering a transformative opportunity to address existing gaps and explore innovative methods for their acquisition.

This special issue explores how GenAI and learning analytics can be leveraged to better understand and foster the development of learners’ 21st-century competencies and professional capabilities. By focusing on both theoretical advances and practical applications, it seeks to contribute to the growing body of knowledge on AI-informed educational innovation and inform best practices in competency-based education. This will ultimately lead to an effective transformation of education that is conducive to different stakeholders. We encourage submissions that address, but not limited to, the following key themes:

Innovative assessment methods for assessing 21st-century competencies and professional capabilities using learning analytics and AI
Innovative applications of GenAI in supporting personalized learning and adaptive skill development
Innovative applications of GenAI in distilling learning analytics-informed insights for curriculum design and alignment with professional standards
The development and evaluation of competencies within the context of professional or workplace learning
Ethical, equity, and validity concerns in deploying AI-powered systems for competency-based education
Frameworks and strategies for fostering institutional readiness to adopt GenAI and learning analytics for competency development

We welcome various types of submissions to this special section, including (but not limited to:

Empirical studies that implement/use Learning Analytics and/or GenAI
Review studies.
Methodological and tool papers introducing novel validated approaches
Practitioner reports
Conceptual papers

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:

An initial submission of a 500-1000 word abstract (including title, authors, outline of the proposed article, 3-5 keywords, and key references) is optional but strongly encouraged to receive early feedback. Submit your abstract by email to the special section editors (emails above) by April 7, 2025. Full papers will undergo the standard double-blind reviewing process. Therefore, if based on your abstract, you are invited to submit a full paper, this invitation is just that and should not be taken as an indication that the final paper will be accepted. Final submissions will take place through JLA’s online submission system at http://learning-analytics.info. When submitting a paper, select the section “Special Section: Advancing 21st-century Professional Competencies”. All submissions should follow JLA’s standard manuscript guidelines and template available on the journal website. Queries may be sent to the special section editors (emails above).

IMPORTANT DATES

Abstract submission emailed to the special section editors: April 7, 2025
Final paper submission: June 09, 2025
Decisions and comments sent to authors: August 15, 2025
Revisions uploaded to the submission system: October 30, 2025
Revised/final manuscripts due: Jan 05, 2026
Publication of special section: March, 2026

REFERENCES

Buckingham Shum, S., & Deakin Crick, R. (2016). Learning Analytics for 21st Century Competencies. Journal of Learning Analytics, 3(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2016.32.2

Joksimovic, S., Siemens, G., Wang, Y. E., San Pedro, M. O. Z., & Way, J. (2020). Editorial: Beyond Cognitive Ability. Journal of Learning Analytics, 7(1), Article 1.https://doi.org/10.18608/jla.2020.71.1

Li, L. (2022). Reskilling and Upskilling the Future-ready Workforce for Industry 4.0 and Beyond. Information Systems Frontiers, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-022-10308-y OECD. (2023). Innovating Assessments to Measure and Support Complex Skills (N. Foster & M. Piacentini, Eds.). OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/e5f3e341-en

Tushar, H., & Sooraksa, N. (2023). Global employability skills in the 21st century workplace: A semi-systematic literature review. Heliyon, 9(11), e21023.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21023