In today’s rapidly evolving job market, artificial intelligence (AI) skills have become essential. According to the 2024 Microsoft Work Trend Annual Index Report1, 66 percent of business leaders wouldn’t hire employees without AI skills, and 71 percent would prioritize candidates with AI knowledge, even over more experienced ones. As AI becomes integral to the workplace, schools must prepare students with skills that are directly transferable to their future careers.
Traditional school assignments, such as essays, multiple-choice tests, and decontextualized math problem sets, often fail to reflect real-world tasks, focusing more on content acquisition than on the crucial skills that employers value, such as creativity, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and problem solving.2 With the rise in prevalence of AI tools like ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs), the relevance of these traditional assignments has diminished even further, prompting educators to seek more durable assessments that AI cannot easily replicate, such as group discussions, hands-on projects, and personal reflections.