Summary

This case study outlines an innovative approach to developing professional competencies through active learning on a redesigned interdisciplinary major project for a Master’s programme at ARU Peterborough. Replacing the traditional thesis, the Consultancy Major Project enables students from varied disciplines to collaborate with clients, build consultancy skills, and reflect on professional skills development. Using problem-based learning (PBL), students engaged in group work, flipped learning, and field trips to strengthen practical and analytical skills. An optional opportunity to gain teaching experience, where postgraduates delivered the client brief in a local school, led to improved career outcomes, while supporting Gatsby Benchmarks for pupils. The module’s inclusive design enhanced student engagement, employability, and client collaboration delivering transformative outcomes.

What did you do?

The traditional postgraduate major project involves a significant individual research project, typically requiring secondary and/or primary research on a relevant topic with academic conventions of writing and style. It can be challenging, particularly for international students and those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), due to pressures around topic selection, academic writing and time management. Concerns around what constitutes ethical and unethical use of generative artificial intelligence adds additional complexity.

As a new institution, we redesigned the postgraduate major project to prioritise employability, aligning with our strategic mission. This new business pathway brings together management students from business, computing and health to tackle real-world problems and deliver consultancy advice. Mapped to course outcomes for each specialised business pathway, the consultancy project fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, consultancy skills, and potential future employability in the global management consultancy sector.

The distinctiveness of this redesigned capstone project lies in its emphasis on group work, the integration of theory with professional practice (Bishop-Monroe et al., 2022), and the alignment of learning outcomes with the professional competencies expected at the Foundation stage of the Chartered Management Consultant Competency Framework (ChMC).

Selecting the client required careful consideration to ensure students from each business pathway could bring their subject specialist knowledge and skills to their mixed project teams. Clients are selected based on their flexibility and willingness to engage, not size. Although students could not choose the client, they could select from three briefs on rebranding, supply chain challenges or developing sustainable practices, retaining an element of choice as seen in a traditional project. Students formed their own interdisciplinary teams, bringing diverse perspectives, subject expertise and soft skills.

In the first half of the module, students worked on the live consultancy brief, with flipped learning, field trips and weekly tutor-led workshops offering scaffolded support (Acosta-Gonzaga & Ramirez-Arellano, 2022). As confidence grew, the learning process (Sousa & Costa, 2022) moved from structured support to critical friend questioning, enabling deeper understanding (e.g., the organisation’s supply chain processes) and the confidence to make actionable recommendations.

In the second half of the module, students individually produced a data-led brochure (styled as a white paper) for a broader audience. Working in small action learning sets (joining two project teams together, students received support in planning, writing, and data visualisation, continuing the supportive dynamic from their earlier teamwork.

Ten postgraduate students participated in an optional teacher training programme before delivering a simplified version of their client brief to 180 schoolchildren aged 14-15 during a three-day entrepreneurship event, which formed part of their Careers Education programme aimed at giving them the knowledge, skills and confidence to make informed decisions about their future education, training and careers. The university students shared insights about teamwork and problem-solving, and supported the schoolchildren to tackle the brief themselves as junior consultants. Reinforcing Salvador et al. (2023), this tripartite relationship offered mutual benefits: the joy of sharing knowledge, work experience and teaching insights for postgraduates, client publicity, and improved careers provision for a school lacking a formal work experience programme. The activity supported Gatsby (2025) Benchmarks 4, 5 and 7 (drawing careers into the curriculum and encounters with employers and higher education).

Throughout, the postgraduates tracked their professional development against the ChMC Framework with reflections forming part of their summative assessment.

Why did you do it?

ARU Peterborough was created to widen participation in Peterborough, one of the most deprived 20% of local authorities in the country (Gov.UK, 2019), by attracting a diverse student population from non-traditional backgrounds to improve social mobility and to redress the skills gaps within business and industries across the region.

Management consultancy, as a ‘key agent in the adoption of new management ideas and practices in organisations’ (Sturdy et al., 2009), offers higher UK starting salaries for graduates than average, and significant potential for social mobility (Consultancy.UK, 2025; Prospects, 2024). This module was designed to improve postgraduate prospects, especially for those lacking professional or social networks. By aligning the assessment with the Chartered Management Consultant (ChMC) Competency Framework, students could gauge their progress towards junior consultant criteria, typically met within two years. This also introduced them to continuous professional development (CPD) and a sense of belonging to a professional association, enhancing employability skills.

The UK Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey highlights that the development of skills towards a career is very important to the experience of many taught postgraduates and is highly valued (Advance HE, 2023). This capstone module incorporated an optional CPD opportunity for the postgraduates to take the client’s real-life problem to local schoolchildren to tackle under their tutelage, allowing them to gain valuable work experience as a subject specialist teacher and extending their career options.

How is this a form of active learning?

This case study showcases an ‘interdisciplinary approach’ to active learning where postgraduate students from various disciplines collaborate as consultants to address real-life challenges for an industry partner in a capstone project. Using problem based collaborative active learning, ‘relevant problems are introduced at the beginning of the instruction cycle’, namely the client’s brief, and tutors develop their ‘students’ ability to solve open-ended problems or engage in lifelong learning’ (Prince, 2004). Reflection against the key competency framework for junior consultants further reinforced this mindset.

Deslauriers et al. (2019) indicate that students in the active classroom ‘learn more, but they feel like they learn less’, but this can be changed through successful intervention. In this case, the students were repeatedly told and shown what they were learning against the framework of professional competencies, then asked to reflect upon that in their final assessment. The ‘value of their increased cognitive effort’ (Deslauriers et al., 2019) was rewarded mid-module when the client was actively involved in the consultancy presentation marking, giving them direct instantaneous feedback.

How do you make sure your approach is inclusive?

The challenges of forming groups were addressed during class using co-creation activities such as online anonymous polling. Students helped to make decisions about how groups would be formed, the size of groups (4-6 students), and how many subject specialists could be in each group. Reinforcing the value of diverse teams with different skills and backgrounds fostered inclusivity, and reduced anxiety by allowing tasks to be divided according to expertise. Crucially, not every student in the team had to present, but they had to contribute their skills equally. Students with additional needs received bespoke support and alternative arrangements as appropriate; this included support with joining a group where they felt comfortable.

Peer review ensured fairness in group marks, enhancing student confidence. Using varied assessment formats, such as presentations, brochures, and reflective frameworks, helped students develop transferable oral and written skills, and students with English as an additional language felt more comfortable writing in brochure format for a professional audience than in a traditional academic writing style, making the experience more relevant and aligned with real-world professional expectations. Overall, increased contact time and formative assessment kept students on track more effectively than with a traditional thesis.

How do you ensure that it is sustainable?

Problem-based learning with real-life projects risks exhausting employer partnerships. However, using one client across multiple briefs in a shared capstone module is more resource-efficient whilst maintaining student choice. As modules grow, preserving client goodwill is essential. Technology can streamline processes, such as hosting online briefings for multiple seminar groups and compiling student questions for submission to the client. Positive experiences, including quality student work, good publicity, and the chance to support future professionals, further strengthen client goodwill and ensure long-term collaboration.

How did students and staff respond?

Prince (2004) highlighted that problem-based learning can ‘attract instructors interested in developing their students’ ability to solve open-ended problems’ and this certainly appears to be highly satisfying work with lecturers requesting to join the team because they enjoyed the coaching and facilitatory style.

All students demonstrated positive gains in professional competencies through their reflective assessment. Module survey responses were positive, highlighting the value of building professional skills. Notably, the client hired one student to implement their digital marketing strategy and adopted a student team’s recommendation to revise part of their commercial strategy. The Managing Partner of the client firm said:

I am very passionate about supporting young talent, and our partnership with ARU Peterborough is allowing us to test these young minds in real-world business situations while taking on board new and different ideas for our own rebrand journey from an array of minds.

The schoolchildren developed confidence and benefited from practical work experience that was missing from their curriculum. This initiative formed part of the university’s outreach programme, designed to work with schools such as this where many pupils face additional barriers to learning, such as having English as an additional language or being eligible for free school meals, therefore helping to promote equity and broaden opportunities. The Principal of the school said:

As well as gaining real-life work experience in the areas of branding, marketing and consultancy, the students collaborated with business students from ARU to put together and present an advertising campaign. They came back full of enthusiasm and inspired for what they could achieve in the future!

How can others adapt your approach to their own context?

This interdisciplinary approach to problem-based active learning connects students through their shared interest in management. The client must present a problem that can be explored from multiple perspectives, within the timeframe, and using data readily available to students. As primary research adds complexity in terms of ethical approval, additional training and time management, the module focuses on secondary data, however the approach could be adapted. Lecturers can expose students to professionally relevant scenarios, helping them to build practical expertise aligned with industry expectations and mapped to appropriate professional competency frameworks. Scaffolded support is key to building student confidence, but lecturers may need training to develop an appropriate facilitative teaching style that encourages students to solve problems independently. Students also need consultancy skills training to effectively clarify the client brief and understand their needs and desired outcomes.

Key takeaways

1. Real-world briefs enhance employability but retaining choice in the brief, output design, or the way teams are formed supports student satisfaction and helps them develop competencies relevant to their chosen career path.
2. Problem-based active learning enables students to engage deeply with real-world problems, but student engagement and skills acquisition can be enhanced by integrating reflective practices, mapping professional standards to learning outcomes, and establishing a lifelong learning habit as part of continuing professional development.
3. Valuing diversity and skills in group formation and employing flexible assessment formats reduced student anxiety and allowed international and SEND students to demonstrate their capabilities, creating a more equitable and inclusive major project module.

References

Acosta-Gonzaga, E., & Ramirez-Arellano, A. (2022). Scaffolding Matters? Investigating its role in motivation, engagement and learning achievements in higher education. Sustainability, 14(20), 13419. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013419

Advance HE. (2023). Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey PTES. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/reports-publications-and-resources/postgraduate-taught-experience-survey-ptes

Bishop-Monroe, R., Jordan, M., Ma, Z., & Royalty, K. (2022). Enhancing business professional competencies in a virtual educational environment. The International Journal of Management Education, 20(3), 100700. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijme.2022.100700

Consultancy UK. (no date). Salary of Consultants. https://www.consultancy.uk/career/salary-of-consultants

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(39), 19251-19257. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

Gatsby. (2025). Good Career Guidance. https://www.gatsby.org.uk/education/focus-areas/good-career-guidance

Gov.UK. (2019). English Indices of Deprivation 2019. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019

Prince, M. (2004). Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93, 223-231. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2004.tb00809.x

Prospects. (2024). Graduate Salaries in the UK. https://luminate.prospects.ac.uk/graduate-salaries-in-the-uk

Salvador, R., Barros, M. V., Barreto, B., Pontes, J., Yoshino, R. T., Piekarski, C. M., & De Francisco, A. C. (2022). Challenges and opportunities for problem-based learning in higher education: Lessons from a cross-program Industry 4.0 case. Industry and Higher Education, 37(1), 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/09504222221100343

Sousa, M. J., & Costa, J. M. (2022). Discovering entrepreneurship competencies through problem-based learning in higher education students. Education Sciences, 12(3), 185. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12030185

Sturdy, A., Clark, T., Fincham, R., & Handley, K. (2009). Between Innovation and Legitimation – Boundaries and Knowledge Flow in Management Consultancy. Organization, 16(5), 627–653.

About the author

Dr Cheryl Greyson is a Senior Lecturer and Faculty Lead of Business and Law at ARU Peterborough. She is a Senior Fellow (HEA), Certified Management Business Educator (CMBE) and Certified Facilitator in LEGO Serious Play™. She specialises in using simulations, live briefs, and playful techniques in marketing education.

cheryl.greyson@aru.ac.uk