Closing the Signaling Gap: Leveraging learning science and technology design principles to support marginalized and vulnerable youth to transfer their skills, knowledge, and abilities, to new and different types of work.

The OECD suggests that young people, ages 18-25, will be the hardest hit by the future of work. As entry-level positions are more likely to involve routine tasks with low skill requirements, this group will be most at risk for disruptions or transitions partially because lack of social capital and exposure to careers prevent them from finding the necessary support to transfer their skills to a new environment (OECD, 2018). As society faces an uncertain and changing future of work, workforce development needs a new paradigm; one founded in leveraging the learning sciences and human-centered technology design to drive inclusion.A preliminary trial of a web-based skills visualization tool with the LA Chamber of Commerce suggests that when participants in their workforce development program created their skills visualization map using the tool, the quantity, and quality of skills used to self-describe increased. Further, the number of participants recommended for an internship also increased. These early results indicate that using a skills visualization map may promote self-explanation, and allow participants to construct a better understanding of how to transfer their skills to a new environment. This approach was used to address the core learning problem of self-explanation, as studies have shown that self-explanation and visualizations are powerful strategies to learn more deeply (Schwartz et al., 2016).