This paper captures a ‘students as partners’ project, in which final-year students took on the role of pedagogic consultants to co-create an employability enhancement toolkit that could increase engagement with enrichment activities to prepare for placement and graduate job applications. The project was carried out with second-year students; it adopted a focus group approach, as a qualitative method for gaining an understanding of 1) what barriers and enablers affect engagement with employability enrichment activities and 2) how the authentic lived experiences of peers may provide additional support. Preliminary findings highlight common barriers (such as time constraints, lack of awareness and perception of the relevance of activities) and positive enablers (such as mentorship and peer influence). Understanding and addressing the barriers while at the same time focusing on enablers and harnessing the lived experiences of peers may well help institutions significantly to increase students’ participation in employability enrichment activities and, as a result, improve their educational gain, acquisition of transferable skills and readiness for employment.
This case study presents a pilot study on exploring student engagement and belonging across three first-year cohorts at a Scottish university: traditional business undergraduates, foundation year students and data science graduate apprentices. Engagement is understood through affective, cognitive and behavioural dimensions (Kahu, 2013) and reflects recent complexities in higher education as a result of diverse student demographics and pandemic-driven shifts in learning (Hollister et al., 2022). The research combines survey data and interviews to analyse students' academic and social experiences, emphasising the importance of belonging, teaching quality and flexible learning environments. Findings indicate that, though most students are fully engaged, the rest (a significant proportion) neither integrate well with university nor build supportive social networks for themselves. Students value interactive teaching, institutional understanding of their outside commitments and provision of extra-curricular activities that are accessible and foster community. Recommendations include transitioning to active learning, increased faculty training, promotion of clubs and societies, peer mentoring and personalised support mechanisms for disengaged students. By foregrounding student voice, the study contributes insights into the overlap between engagement, belonging and institutional practice, aiming to inform strategies/frameworks that enhance success for all cohorts in a changing educational context.
This case study explores the role of Advancing Assessment (AA) Interns at the University of Southampton in enhancing assessment and feedback practices through co-design. Drawing on our experiences in reflective practice around the project principles and co-working with the AA interns, this case study looks at the tangible and intangible contributions of student interns to institutional change. The reflective workshop highlighted the AA interns dual role as both contributors and cultural bridges between students and staff and examined how they feel about their role and involvement in co-design. The findings reveal a tension between visibility and impact, with AA interns valuing collaborative working and visible contributions, but feeling disconnected from the project when they are not kept informed about the impact of the work they completed. The case study concludes with recommendations for embedding iterative evaluative practice to ensure the student voice is more meaningfully embedded as part of institutional change processes and that co-creation initiatives are impactful.
This article presents an in‑depth case study of a live‑client brief embedded within a first‑year Contract Law module at a new‑style university in the United Kingdom. The project involved two distinct stages of co‑creation: first, a collaborative design process between academic staff and an external industry partner; second, a live assessment in which students worked directly with the industry partner to analyse, critique and revise a contractual document used in professional practice. Drawing on semi‑structured interviews with four students, the study identifies five interrelated themes that shaped students’ experiences of co‑creation: ownership, structural design, future scalability, problem‑based pedagogy and student agency. These themes illuminate how live‑client briefs can operationalise co‑creation by positioning students as epistemic partners who contribute to the production of knowledge with real‑world impact. The findings demonstrate that live‑client briefs may transform traditional pedagogical relationships by redistributing authority, fostering shared decision‑making and enabling students to influence both the process and outcomes of learning. However, the study also highlights structural challenges relating to assessment design, timetabling constraints, group dynamics and equitable participation. These challenges stress the value of intentional scaffolding, institutional adjustment to accommodate new demands and sustainable partnership models. The article contributes to scholarship on: industry‑integrated curriculum development; assessment and evaluation of co‑creation; innovative collaborative learning. It argues that authentic co‑creation requires a reconfiguration of pedagogical relationships, a commitment to relational accountability and the embedding of co‑creative practices within institutional structures. The study offers insights relevant to legal education and to wider disciplines seeking to embed sustainable co‑creation practices in undergraduate curricula.
Higher education faces growing pressure to prepare students for complex, inter-disciplinary problem solving through authentic engagement with industry. Yet challenge-based learning scholarship at undergraduate level remains thin, with most empirical accounts concentrated in engineering or postgraduate contexts. This case study addresses that gap through three action research cycles, in which two inter-disciplinary, credit-bearing electives were successively redesigned in response to student and partner feedback, delivered at a London-based university between 2024 and 2025. Drawing on student surveys, focus groups and partner reflections, the analysis reveals four inter-connected tensions: 1) balancing experiential learning with student expectations for structure; 2) moving beyond surface-level industry engagement; 3) reconciling academic rigour with practical application; 4) embedding transferable skills development implicitly rather than as an explicit add-on. From these tensions, the paper proposes a four-pillar reconceptualisation of challenge-based learning: meta-learning, ecosystem thinking, deep partnering and mutual value creation. The framework is offered as a practical guide for educators designing iterative, partner-integrated experiential courses, with specific design moves for each pillar that can be adapted to local disciplinary and institutional contexts.
