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 are usually undertaken in groups.

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 students will present their work back to the client in-person.

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

Students from the University of Brighton’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.

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."