How assignments can be converted into a socio-economic asset

When students are given assignments that matter in the real world, they are empowered as knowledge producers. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto For generations, the pursuit of grades or marks has ruled Indian academia. Teachers quite often lament that this socially constructed obsession with high scores impedes authentic contextual learning. Yet the contemporary learner is moving away from a test-oriented approach to ask: What will I get by doing this? They want to know how their examination-related efforts will bear immediate financial fruit. Hence, learning- and earning-oriented assessments become imperative. An assignment should no longer be a piece of paper that a teacher grades and forgets. It needs to become a real socio-economic asset that informs policy decisions and generates revenue.New frameworkTo evolve such assessment practices in the AI age, we should stop playing the role of a detective, trying to catch students using AI. Therefore, we propose the PRISM-X evaluation framework to assess AI-generated assessments effectively. PRISM-X stands for Prompting efficacy, Reflective capability, Integrating competence, Synthesising potential, Metacognitive ability and Extended collaboration. When broken down, the components of PRISM-X are as follows:Prompting efficiency: Assess how students actually converse with the machine. Are they tossing out lazy questions? Or engineering razor-sharp prompts? Handing over every prompt and follow-up query, along with the final assignment, is strictly mandatory.Reflective capability: The machine generates an answer but does the student swallow it as it is? Or do they spot the cracks? The true test is the human critique of the AI-generated content, catching the bias and calling out misinformation.Integrating competence: AI-generated content may produce raw data but it is crucial to breathe meaning into it. How well learners fuse sterile facts with original and contextualised thought matters most. In context, a paper on climate studies requires more than just algorithmic Maths. It demands the grit of experience and insights from classroom debates and lived reality.Synthesising potential: This considers the learner’s ability to use existing knowledge to develop new theories, frameworks, and public discourses. For instance, a standard sociology essay could become an engaging podcast script that creates awareness and generates revenue. Therefore, what is evaluated is the ability to package academic concepts into accessible formats that the real world actually values.Metacognitive ability: This aims to answer crucial questions about learning in itself, such as whether leaning on technology breeds laziness or stimulates deeper thinking. Hence, learners are expected to articulate their learning process to prove that AI served as a springboard for cognitive growth. Validation can be through an oral defence of their own assignments, demonstrating the learning process as a conceptual orchestrator rather than a passive consumer of AI-generated content.Extended collaboration: Does the assignment live beyond the classroom walls? It assesses whether the project produces tangible socio-economic impact. For instance, a basic coding task should not just be graded and discarded but developed into software for a local charity initiative to track donations, thereby delivering real-world impact.Ethics of moneyWhile encouraging learners to make money using their assessments may seem like commercialising learning, it must be noted that commercialisation of education has already been rationalised. But the greater responsibility lies with educators to channel student ideas about money by deliberating on fair earnings. When assignments begin to earn money, classrooms must discuss their worth: self-worth, social worth, and net worth in that order. In the words of Thiruvalluvar, the world offers no place to those without wealth and the inner world offers nothing to the unkind (Kural 247). We must equip learners to create wealth with kindness, a much-needed juxtaposition.When students are given assignments that matter in the real world, they are empowered as knowledge producers. So, educators must ask one fundamental question before assigning a task. If this assignment created real-life knowledge but scored fewer marks, would the student still feel proud to share it? When the answer is yes, higher education will have truly evolved to nurture conscious creators and thought leaders, not merely for future jobs but to shape the future with progressive thought and action.Views expressed are personalJ. Jehoson Jiresh is Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies, Christ Deemed-to-be University), Bengaluru. K. Abarna SriPreethi is an independent researcher and visiting faculty of English, Bengaluru. Email: jehoson.jiresh@christuniversity.in and abarnapreethisri@gmail.com. Published - August 22, 2026 11:54 am IST