Bringing the real world into the classroom through team-based live brief projects
Jackson J., Day N., Maher K.
Team-based project work in higher education provides opportunities to enhance collaborative learning, to strengthen students' academic skills in a work-related context, and to instil valuable transferable skills that relate to the modern workplace. This chapter explores existing literature on live briefs, their relevance to graduate employability, and how the involvement of external stakeholders can bring real-world experience into the classroom as part of a social constructivist approach to learning. Alongside an analysis of the different approaches documented in the literature, Live Brief examples are presented from a final-year undergraduate Computing and Software Engineering learning context within a higher education Institution based in England. The pedagogical underpinnings, benefits, ethical considerations, and challenges of live briefs are discussed along with other factors such as the value of student-staff-stakeholder partnerships, the importance of collaboration between academia and industry, potential applications of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), and the power of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) through engagement with social issues.