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Advanced Digital Technologies in Newcomer Employment Programs: Understanding the Role of Metacognitive Skills and other Individual Differences

Project briefs - Horizontal - adts-metacognitive-skills-individual-differences

Project Lead

Julia Spaniol

Team Members

Pelin Tanberg, Shawn Newman, Fiona Thomas

Little is known about how GenAI is being adopted by newcomers entering the workforce, whose lower familiarity with Canadian culture and possible language barriers increase the risks it poses, from algorithmic bias to overreliance on digital tools.

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Objective 

This project investigates the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) within newcomer employment programs in Canada. The project is a collaboration between research psychologists at TMU and Skills for Change (SfC), a leading workforce development training provider in Ontario. Phase 1 of the project will use a mixed-methods approach to understand newcomers' positive and negative experiences with GenAI in the employment context. Phase 2 will use an experimental approach to test whether educational modules designed to boost GenAI knowledge and metacognitive skills enhance GenAI use and employment outcomes in newcomers.

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Research Questions

  1. What are newcomers’ experiences with, and attitudes toward, GenAI in the employment context, and which individual factors (e.g., language, education, digital competency, metacognitive or “thinking about thinking” skills, personality traits) play a role?
  2. Can GenAI training with focus on GenAI knowledge building and metacognitive skills training improve newcomers’ GenAI usage, learning, motivation, and employment outcomes?
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Methodology

The project adopts a psychological lens to understand the impact of ADTs on newcomer employment programs. A particular focus will be on the role of metacognition – a set of modifiable cognitive skills that enable individuals to be aware of, and regulate, their own thinking – that has been identified as a critical predictor of successful human-ADT collaboration in educational settings. 

The research design includes a two-phase approach.

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Partners

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Status

This project has commenced and data collection for Phase 1 is currently ongoing.

Expected completion date: March 2027

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Keywords

Immigrant employment; artificial intelligence; advanced digital technologies; job search tools; human-AI interaction; digital literacy; metacognitive skills