How do we design curricula that genuinely connect industry practice, employability and the realities of generative AI?
Two studies I led for ECE2026 are now available in the official conference proceedings, and I’m very pleased to share them together here.
The first came from work with Kirsty Beaumont and Ruth O’Riordan around a practical question: how do we bring industry into the curriculum in a way that genuinely adds to student learning?
Across four cohort iterations and two marketing modules, we brought together student feedback, co-design responses, curriculum documents and assessment records. The result was BRIDGE, a framework for industry-integrated curriculum design built around the brief, the real client, employability competencies, developmental feedback, graduate-ready evidence and ongoing evaluation.
One of the things I found most useful was that the evidence did not simply say “live clients are better”. Client-task fit, workload, scaffolding and the capacity of the organisation all mattered. That makes the framework much more useful as a practical curriculum-design tool.
Kirsty and I are continuing this work too, with plans to develop and test the ideas further.
The second contribution, with Dr Andrew Ross, Dr Malcolm Stewart and Dr Fahima Alam, looks at a different challenge: what happens when we introduce students to generative AI but do not explicitly design its use into the assessment architecture?
We audited 182 submissions across four assessment sets. AI had been taught and demonstrated, but none of the 182 submissions evidenced revision or disciplinary justification of generated output. This led us to the concept of specified latitude and the CRAFT framework: moving beyond simply deciding whether AI is allowed, towards specifying where it can be used and what evidence of the student’s own judgement should remain visible and assessable.
Both pieces started with practical questions emerging from teaching, assessment and curriculum design, so it is great to have the fuller work available alongside the conference presentations.
The AI strand also connects with my wider research across artificial intelligence, technology innovation and organisational change, including another AI-related article I led that has recently been accepted in the Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Read the ECE2026 papers:
- BRIDGE: Industry-Integrated Curriculum Design for Employability in Marketing Education
- CRAFT: Designing AI-Supported Assessment in Marketing Education
Earlier related work:
Originally shared on LinkedIn.
