What are the top workforce trends that will empower the workforce in 2025 and the years to come? Workcred asked industry leaders Isabelle Gonthier of PSI Services, Eric D’Astolfo of Pearson VUE, and Cynthia Woodley of Professional Testing for their insights on the topic.
The experts identified artificial intelligence (AI) as a leading trend—a transformative force that is reshaping how testing organizations evaluate workforce competencies and credentials. With all of the promise that AI brings, experts warn about the threats associated with the emerging technology as it becomes a mainstay in workforce evaluation. Beyond AI, the rise of microcredentials, remote online proctoring, and continuous learning were identified as additional workforce trends.
*Interviews edited for clarity and length
Workcred: How do you think AI will impact work related to assessments and credentialing in 2025?
Isabelle Gonthier (IG): AI is here and it’s moving fast. AI innovation in testing will continue to be a top priority and focus for testing organizations in 2025. Testing organizations are already leveraging AI across the assessment cycle, for defining and organizing tasks or job task analysis studies, creating test content, and scoring and reporting.
With the addition of AI and other technologies, test takers will see a more streamlined testing experience, both remotely and in test centers. This includes streamlined scheduling, smooth identity verification, improved security features, and enhanced communication. We need to ensure that testing organizations are not left behind as technology moves on. This is why it is important for organizations to educate themselves, seek expertise, and embrace all the opportunities AI can bring to test security and efficiency, now and into the future.
Eric D’Astolfo (ED): Generative AI as a means of drafting and creating test items will gradually become more widely used as legal strategies around copyright and trade secrets better ensure defense of IP ownership. Many test owners and publishers will initially opt to use AI only for lower stakes content like practice exams; others will push forward to use AI for higher stakes test content. There will be an adoption curve but ultimately over time most sponsors will be using generative AI in a variety of ways to support their exam content development.
Cynthia Woodley (CW): AI will enable increased development of more authentic, high-fidelity assessments, including performance simulations and new innovative formats, administered in various ways and places, and customized to each test taker. Perhaps AI’s key impact on test takers will be how to address transparency. With many AI systems functioning as "black boxes," test takers cannot see how AI-enabled assessment processes arrive at their outputs or what criteria are being applied to make decisions. This can cause confusion and mistrust, especially when test takers feel that AI-assisted assessment elements, such as the exam content, testing process, or scoring, are unfair. To rectify this, test sponsors will have to make transparency a key priority in AI-enabled assessments. Adoption of a publicly available ethical framework of AI use in assessments can serve as a foundational basis for guidance and practices.
Test sponsors should offer test-takers clear, responsive explanations of how AI systems make decisions in developing, delivering, scoring, and interpreting assessments. Investigation of the impact of AI supported processes on the fairness, reliability, and validity of the assessment should conducted and results disclosed to test takers. Test sponsors additionally have the obligation to ensure test takers be informed about the collection and use of personal data by AI applications and their protections and rights under data privacy regulations. Such measures collectively taken will help hold test sponsors accountable to stakeholders in transparent use of AI.
Another significant opportunity for innovative AI use is accessibility. AI will have the capacity to help accommodate test takers with disabilities through improved features such as text-to-speech, text recognition, or alternative formats for answering questions. This will ensure that more people will have improved access to a fair and equitable testing process.
Workcred: How can we leverage AI to have successful outcomes while mitigating risk?
IG: AI presents a threat as well as an opportunity, with AI being used to create new and more sophisticated tools to commit malpractice. Deepfake attempts have surged, with a 3,000 percent increase from 2022 to 2023 (2025 Identity Fraud Report, Entrust). Document fraud has also skyrocketed. Digital forgeries have doubled to 34.8 percent of all document fraud attempts in the last six months, up from 16.7 percent in 2023. So as the technology used to commit malpractice continues to advance, we need to focus on ways to safeguard test integrity with added layers of security—such as multi-biometric analysis (e.g., face, voice, and keystroke recognition), advanced identity verification, and deepfake detection.
While AI will be vital in addressing test security threats, AI adoption needs to be balanced with providing an exceptional test taker experience. Why and how we are using AI must be clearly communicated to test takers, with a solid rationale behind any implementation.
CW: AI can bring benefits to psychometric work, but there are caveats. One of them is the required transparency and interpretability. Many AI algorithmic operations act in opaque ways, yielding results without an explanation of how those results were derived. In high-stakes examinations, where principles of equity and accountability are of significant consequence, this can certainly be problematic. Psychometricians will also need design methods and approaches to validate AI-generated results.
Workcred: What other trends will impact your work related to assessments and credentialing in 2025?
ED: 2025 will see the continuing exploration of remote online proctoring for some testing organizations. This will continue to drive more investment by test delivery providers in AI-driven technologies to authenticate candidates’ identities and detect cheating, whether through observation or through data forensics. Also, maintenance of certification (re-certifying and re-licensing) will continue to evolve as testing and credentialing bodies embrace learning-based models while they continue to retire models which require certificants to re-test in order to maintain their credential. Generative AI will very likely play a role in this ongoing and long-term development.
Another long-term trend to watch as AI becomes more integrated into daily professional life: how test sponsors not only use AI to generate test items, but potentially how they embed AI-related content or even AI-powered tools directly into their credentialing exams to create more authentic, performance-based assessments.
IG: The test taker experience has always been a priority, and it is important that we continue to focus on removing friction points and providing the best possible test day experience. With the addition of AI and other technologies, test takers will see a more streamlined testing experience—both remotely and in test centers. This includes streamlined scheduling, smooth ID verification, improved security features, and enhanced communication.
Equally, the tools available to test takers for test preparation are transforming from simple practice tests into tailored, adaptive experiences. Test takers benefit from better practice tests involving more interactions, direct feedback, and justifications to support their preparation. AI also creates opportunities to easily and efficiently generate more content for practice tests.
CW: Certification bodies are increasingly recognizing the importance and value of lifelong learning. They are providing avenues for ongoing education, upskilling, and knowledge enhancement through resources like webinars, workshops, and online courses, fostering a culture of continuous professional development. This movement towards continuous learning has found its way into the assessment industry and likely will grow in 2025.
Additionally, microcredentials and modular assessments will be a growing trend in 2025. Demonstrating specific competencies, these targeted assessments focus on particular skills or knowledge areas, allowing for credentialing pathways that align with workforce needs. [Workcred’s note: Read more about the impact of microcredentials here.] Test takers are the real winners of a shift towards microcredentials. The use of microcredentials assists the test taker in initially obtaining the foundational credential and then quickly entering the workforce with gainful employment. Thereafter, the test taker may obtain the next microcredential as they learn more and grow in the occupation. The benefit of having an ongoing revenue stream for the industry and allowing the test taker to work while seeking employment and credentialing growth is a win-win for the workforce and the test taker alike.
Overall, AI will be a game changer in creating innovation around accessibility, communication, scheduling, detecting misconduct or misrepresentation for testing practices. It will also increase security, ease the test taking experience, and improve efforts to maintain transparency as long as efforts are made to mitigate the challenges AI poses.
Eric D’Astolfo, Pearson VUE
Isabelle Gonthier, PSI Services
Cynthia Woodley, Professional Testing
