Fostering project-based learning and performance assessment

In March 2016, it was a shock to Koreans when Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence AlphaGo scored four wins and only one loss against Korean Go Master Lee Sedol, who is considered one of the best Go players in the world. For most Koreans, the predictions made by the Fourth Industrial Revolution Report (Schwab, 2016) presented at the Davos Forum in January 2016 seemed unreal at the time. It predicted that as digital technologies are exponentially integrated into areas of physics and biology, the way of living could change fundamentally through the emergence of new technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IOT), and 3D printing. However, through the game of Go between a man and a machine, Koreans could see vividly that the Fourth Industrial Revolution was just around the corner. Furthermore, several forecasts on the labor market changes from the Fourth Industrial Revolution1 predicted that half of the current jobs could be gone by the time elementary school children become job seekers. Such warning was enough to spark a sense of crisis to parents and students in Korea that they are being educated for jobs that would eventually disappear. As a result, discussions on the necessary skills and the ways of teaching and learning these skills in anticipation of rapid technological changes were transformed into a more tangible and concrete question about how best to change the learning system in response to the Fourth Industrial Revolution.