Bridging higher education and practice: a one-week live-case model supporting interdisciplinarity and lifelong learning

Journal article, 2026

Universities face the dual challenge of preparing full-time students for real-world work-life challenges and offering practitioners lifelong learning (LLL) opportunities. The purpose of this article is to develop and assess a small-scale live-case model that focuses on both full-time and LLL students’ learning, reflecting on its implications for students, practitioners, and universities to better understand how to simultaneously promote lifelong learning and work-life integration in higher education. The model addresses two key challenges in previous live-case literature: high resource demands and the tendency to focus on organisational rather than individual learning. By focusing on a shared, small-scale live case involving quality improvement in healthcare, the small-scale live-case model offers a resource-efficient and time-bound format promoting mutual learning and engagement between engineering students and healthcare practitioners.