ID228 Challenge-led Curriculum

The Idea

To develop a distinctive Keele curriculum experience centred around challenge-led, interdisciplinary and community-connected learning, embedded throughout the student journey. 

Keele is currently at a crossroads in defining a distinctive future degree offering. The institution can either focus primarily on structural change or take this opportunity to fundamentally rethink the nature of the higher education experience itself. 

This proposal argues that Keele should create a genuinely distinctive student experience that equips students for an increasingly complex academic and employment landscape. This would involve creating a holistically designed and delivered challenge-led curriculum that: 

• Applies disciplinary knowledge to real-world challenges whilst engaging with external, community and global partners 
• Works collaboratively across disciplines to develop project-based outputs 
• Moves towards integrated assessment that values how students build professional identity and employability throughout their studies, whilst remaining resilient within an evolving AI landscape 

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

Strategic discussions around the Lindsay Vision have highlighted a desire to strengthen interdisciplinarity and articulate a clearer ‘Keele difference’ within an increasingly competitive sector. 

Much of the discussion to date has focused on questions of degree structure, however, there is an opportunity to rethink the learning experience more fundamentally.  

This proposal responds to key institutional priorities by reclaiming the Keele identity, towards a more intentional model of applied interdisciplinary learning, where students integrate knowledge in response to authentic challenges. These challenges would provide the context for learning rather than replacing disciplinary teaching, enabling students to develop knowledge through authentic inquiry and application. 

Models of challenge-led and externally engaged learning already exist within professional, social enterprise and specialist higher education environments, where authentic client and community-based projects have demonstrated strong engagement and graduate readiness. However, these approaches have rarely been embedded within universities at scale. This presents an opportunity for Keele to position itself as a sector leader in contemporary, challenge-led higher education.

How We Would Implement This Idea

Keele has a history of interdisciplinarity and successful challenge-led modules; this would extend that pedagogy across entire programmes. The model would foreground challenge-led inquiry, where students encounter authentic, unresolved problems throughout the entire degree. 

Programmes would be structured around genuine real-world challenges, with the view to bring in external partners, allowing students to work on complex, interdisciplinary scenarios without predetermined outcomes. Programmes could feature several smaller challenges or a continuous, more ambitious challenge across the programme year. 

The intention is not to replace disciplinary study, but to create structured opportunities for students to apply disciplinary expertise through interdisciplinary challenge-based learning while graduating with strong subject knowledge and disciplinary identity. 

Academic staff would continue to play a central role as disciplinary experts, facilitators of inquiry and critical guides, supporting students to navigate complex problems, apply disciplinary knowledge and reflect on emerging solutions. Students would engage with disciplinary knowledge throughout the challenge and apply this as they go, rather than only applying knowledge retrospectively after it has been taught. 

This approach focuses on re-designing approaches to learning and streamlining modules, making greater use of integrated assessment rather than creating additional modules and assessment workload. Implementation would require institution-wide curriculum leadership, supported through existing programme modification processes and specialist curriculum design expertise to ensure coherence while allowing programmes flexibility in how challenge-led learning is embedded within disciplinary contexts. 

What Success Would Look Like

Success would be visible through: 

• Prospective students increasingly recognise challenge-led, interdisciplinary learning as a distinctive feature of the Keele educational experience 
• Positive student feedback on challenge-based learning, external engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration 
• Increased student confidence in applying knowledge in real-world contexts 
• Strong graduate outcomes and employability indicators 
• Growth in the number and quality of external partners, community collaborations 
• Recognition of Keele as a sector leader in challenge-led, interdisciplinary and community-connected higher education