Dr Duminda Rajasinghe  and Dr Tolulope Fadipe discuss what students, academics and employers each gain from Nottingham Business School’s NBS Bright Challenge 

NBSBright challenge is one of our business support initiatives and aligns with our personalisation and experiential learning strategy at Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University. As part of this initiative, we have been working with final year students and HR/Business professionals from various  organisations. The aim of this collaboration is to provide solutions to current business challenges through student-led projects supervised by experienced academics.  

Over the years, we have worked with small, medium and large organisations from various sectors including not-for-profit, government and business organisations such as Next Retail, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), National Health Service (NHS), Accounting Plus Charity organisation and specialist HR organisations like Staffline among others. These organisations were enthusiastic about obtaining fresh, external perspectives and gaining potential solutions to some of their current challenges. Each  organisation we worked with developed a detailed project brief outlining the challenges that should be addressed. We integrated these briefs into a final year, practice-based module as an assessed piece of work.  

Working closely with students and supervising their groups as they tackle real business challenges has been a genuinely satisfying experience for us as academics.  Client organisations have implemented students’ recommendations and acknowledged the value of the NBSBright Challenge in addressing real-world business challenges. Presenting these projects as summative assessment helped to secure strong student commitment and foster deeper engagement.  These projects have been personally and professionally rewarding. In this blog, we aim to communicate some of the benefits of our collaborations with students and industry to spark motivations and encourage pedagogic innovations. 

For students, the experience has created valuable opportunities to engage with senior HR/Business professionals from renowned organisations,  working on real-life business issues, and building professional networks while strengthening their knowledge, skills, and employability. Through collaboration with academics, practitioners, and peers, students have been able to “move from legitimate peripheral participation into full participation” (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p. 37). As academics, we also benefit from this engagement, gaining first-hand insight into practitioner perspectives and the current business challenges from the experiences of business professionals.  Practitioners who collaborate with academics and students claim that such engagements help challenge their predispositions and provide a renewed understanding of relevant theoretical perspectives and their application to business challenges.  

We see this project as having real potential for wider impact, bringing together students, academics, and practitioners to co-create solutions to real business issues. The mix of students’ fresh perspectives, academic’ research insights, and practitioners’ expertise is a powerful and relatively rare combination, helping to bridge the practice-research gap (Kaufman, 2022). Moreover, innovative assessment strategies like the NBS Bright Challenge are timely as Artificial Intelligence is reshaping traditional approaches to assessments, and students’ learning and development.  Projects of this nature have the potential to move beyond emphasis on authentic assessments in a professional context, as NBS Bright challenge project closely links a) contextual authenticity, (relevance to real life/disciplinary context); b) task authenticity (as it resembles professional practice); c) personal authenticity (project aligns with students’ career interests, values) (Zhang et al., 2025).  As business schools and other institutions rethink assessment strategies to respond to AI, employability pressures, and questions of relevance, initiatives like the NBS Bright Challenge offer meaningful benefits for all stakeholders. Below, we outline some of the benefits we have experienced, with the aim of inspiring others to explore similar possibilities.  

Impact of NBS bright Challenge 

• Leveraging academic research for practical business impact: Businesses gain evidence-based, research-informed solutions to current challenges with minimal cost implications, requiring only the time needed to develop the project brief and some engagement with student groups during the project period. This offers an opportunity to translate research into practice.  Moreover, this project facilitates a positive collaborative model to address long-argued gaps between research and practice as it emphasises the relevance of both worlds, thereby challenging predispositions of both academics and practitioners.  

• Developing and building a talent pool through applied business projects: Experiential learning strategically positions students as an emerging talent pool, enabling organisations to engage early in the development of future capabilities. Through practice-based collaboration, businesses can actively shape, develop, and harness student talent, thereby strengthening organisational talent pipelines while ensuring graduates are work-ready, professionally agile, and aligned with evolving industry needs. In turn, students gain valuable insight into organisations in different sectors, helping them make informed career decisions based on real-life experiences of working with professionals. By working directly on current business challenges, students improve their ability to apply theoretical knowledge to practice in diverse contexts. This fosters problem-solving, creativity, and a deeper understanding of how academic concepts operate in the real world. Moreover, this initiative helps develop learners’ relevant skills, mindset, agency, and professionalism 

• Collaborative practice-informed teaching and learning: The project brings together students, academic staff and industry professionals, thereby promoting collaboration, knowledge exchange, and the development of future partnerships between higher education institutions and business practice, with evidence showing that industry-university partnerships enhance engagement, value creation, and long-term collaboration frameworks (Gutierrez et al., 2025). Academics gain exposure to contemporary industry issues, which enrich their teaching with practical relevance. Working alongside practitioners further strengthens the connection between research and practice (Kauffman, 2022) in curriculum development and review, resulting in good learning opportunities for all stakeholders.   

• Strengthening academic integrity through authentic assessment: It supports academic integrity by engaging students in real organisational projects that require primary analysis and applied problem solving, an approach which aligns with Zhan et al’s (2025) broader perspective of authentic assessment that covers contextual, task and personal authenticity. This assessment type reduces likelihood of plagiarism, academic misconduct, contract cheating, and inappropriate use of artificial intelligence tools, ensuring that student work reflects genuine learning and professional capability. 

• Building lifelong and life wide skills: The project reinforces students’ development as lifelong and lifewide learners by strengthening their transferable skills that remain valuable throughout their career. Students enhance their communication, teamwork, leadership, resilience, time management, and decision-making abilities. These essential skills extend beyond academic achievement, supporting students’ confidence, adaptability, and effectiveness in both business and personal life. 

Future focus 

Reflecting on our experience so far and the impact of these projects, we invite business schools around the world to explore how such initiatives can contribute meaningfully to both local and international businesses while strengthening student readiness, talent pipeline and relevance of academic research. Such initiatives will provide opportunities for business schools to ensure their learning, teaching, and research are at the heart of positive changes in the world of work. These projects also create valuable pathways for internships, work placements, contract research, engaged scholarships, and practice-based opportunities for academics. Moreover, there are potentials for co-teaching, assessment and feedback practices in collaboration with practitioners. 

Looking ahead, our focus is firmly on deepening and scaling these collaborative partnerships. We recognise that many business schools in developing countries seem to have more gaps in how academic research, learning, teaching, and assessment practices address current business challenges. In response, we have started collaborating with such institutions, co-developing practices, sharing knowledge, and learning through mutual engagement. To strengthen our work, we aim to undertake further research that builds a richer, evidence-based understanding of relevant assessment practices. We thrive as a ‘business school for businesses’ as we continue to evolve through initiatives such as NBS Bright challenge, which exemplifies our commitment to embedding practice-focused, socially relevant, and industry-engaged learning at the core of our teaching, learning and research. We therefore encourage academics, business schools, and business organisations to critically reflect on their practices and explore ways of co-creating approaches that deliver sustained value for business schools, organisations, communities, and wider stakeholders. Through such partnerships, we see significant potential to address both    business needs and broader societal challenges.  

Duminda Rajasinghe, PhD is a senior lecturer in HRM and OB at Nottingham Trent University. Duminda’s research interest lies in coaching and adult learning. He works as an academic mentor and an executive coach at Nottingham Business school.  He is a Senior Fellow of the AdvancedHE (SFHEA), Academic Member of CIPD and the Chair of external relations committee of University Forum of HRD.  

Tolulope Fadipe, PhD, is Programme Lead for Business Management and Human Resources at Nottingham Business School. He leads a team dedicated to personalisation and experiential learning. His research explores organisational learning, knowledge management, and people wellbeing. He is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and Academic Member of CIPD. 

References 

Gutierrez, A.S., Fox, J. & Clifton, J. (2025). The significance of partnerships to future university missions: A systematic literature review. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 62(3), pp. 1101–1115. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2024.2377127 

Kaufman, B.E. (2022). The academic-practitioner gap: Past time to bring in the practitioner perspective. Human Resource Management Review, 32(2), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2022.100895 

Lave J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Zhan, Y., Boud, D. & Du, Z. (2025). Designing for authentic assessment: a scoping review. Higher Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-025-01588-9