Real-world project briefs

At Brighton, we incorporate real-world projects into our courses, to help students develop their practical skills, confidence and employability. Projects will be relevant to the course and students work in groups to come up with solutions over a period of 6-8 weeks.

In most cases the client, who will usually be from an external business, or sometimes from the university’s professional departments, will brief the students on a real project, which may incorporate research, analysis, planning and proposing a range of solutions. After an agreed timescale, the student project teams will present their work back to the client.

Organisations that provide project briefs for our students in the School of Business and Law include

  • Ace corporate fitness
  • Ace corporate Fitness
  • Brighton Bike Hub
  • Consort frozen foods
  • Destination Cranleigh
  • Down Syndrome Development Trust
  • Fabrica gallery
  • Friends of Westdene Green
  • Grace Eyre Foundation
  • Hatch ideas worldwide
  • Healthwatch Brighton and Hove
  • Instepp fitness Ltd
  • Little Jasmine Therapies and Spa
  • Magenta PR
  • Majahma
  • Mason’s cycles
  • PSC Global
  • Shoreham port
  • Slake Spirits
  • Sound waves foundation
  • Southern Hospice Group
  • Take Shelter
  • Tech take back
  • Together Co
  • Tottington Manor
  • Turning tides
  • Woodfire
  • Worthing Clinic

I worked with two other students on a brief from a frozen food company. We were asked to do a market analysis to assess the viability of a new product line, which was aimed at businesses, and completely different to the client’s existing products."

Holly, Business Management with Human Resource Management BSc (Hons)

We had to manage the relationship with our client, which involved properly scoping the project and agreeing expectations so we could come up with suggestions that were reasonable for the given time period."

Cristin, Business Management with Economics BSc (Hons)

Hackathons

Some courses also incorporate Innovation hackathons, which are a shorter version of the real-world briefs. In these are fast-paced sessions, students work on real-life challenges faced by local businesses and community organisations, for around three hours.

It is an opportunity for students to develop their 黑料网 Graduate Attributes and apply a range of enterprise skills - including creative thinking, problem solving, communication, pitching, and collaboration.

Students and clients at Hackathon

Examples from the School of Business & Law

Social enterprise arm of the Network of International Women for Brighton & Hove.

Challenge: how to increase sales of Sewing Collective products, and how to boost community engagement.

Based on 黑料网’s campus.

Challenge: how to market the BSU Essentials shop to the right student audience

Currently available on module MK644 Consumer Psychology, in the School of Business & Law

Examples from the School of Art & Media

Charity that offers children and young people the opportunity to develop writing skills.

Challenge: how to develop an engaging, non-tech feedback mechanism for young service users.

Currently features on Games Art & Design BA (Hons)

Woodland wellbeing experiences including team bonding, forest school and bush craft sessions.

Challenge: how to use storytelling through film to widen the demographics of people who engage with Wilder Days

Currently features on Film BA (Hons)

Case study: Students evaluate the costs and benefits of Solar PV panels for the university

Students from the 黑料网’s economics and finance courses were given a real-life project to assess the feasibility and potential benefits of investing in Solar PV (photovoltaic) panels for one of the university’s buildings, Mithras House. With a focus on sustainability and cost-efficiency, the students were asked to conduct a thorough financial appraisal of the proposed investment.

Head of Sustainability at the university, Ollie Swan, was the client on the project. Ollie said: We needed to conduct this comprehensive financial analysis, but at the time, did not have the capacity within the team to undertake such a complex piece of work. So, we reached out to the university’s economics and finance students.

Participants

Two students, Morgan Schroder and Tommy Soleye, both from the university’s Economics BSc(Hons) course, were on the project team as part of their Environmental Economics module.

Morgan Schroder

Economics student Morgan Schroder

Approach

The students were split into groups of four and five. Morgan and Tommy’s group chose the Solar PV brief over an alternative task assessing computer replacement compared to refurbishment. Armed with a large volume of data on energy prices and university consumption patterns, the students embarked on what proved to be a challenging project.

Both Morgan and Tommy emphasised the autonomy they were given. Tommy said: "We were not hand-fed through this project. We had to read through all the data, and use our initiative about how to approach it, making our own assumptions along the way". Morgan agreed: "It was much more complex than we expected, but it was a real project, which gave me real experience that I can now talk about in a job interview." Tommy added: "Employers are looking for graduates to demonstrate this kind of initiative."

Outcomes

The students completed their financial appraisal and presented their findings back to the client, Ollie Swan, who said: "Building on the skills developed on their course, the students have used academic rigour, combined with their own ideas to effectively analyse the data and propose carefully considered solutions for a real-world solar PV initiative. The students’ results confirmed the suitability of our initial thinking and gave us a fantastic opportunity to gain thoughts and insight from society’s next generation of economics professionals."