The British army women’s football team didn’t expect to secure their best ever result at this year’s Inter Services tournament. Their success was partly down to students from Southampton Solent University’s school of health and sport who spent three months offering psychoeducation workshops, sports science testing, sports therapy support, and performance analysis sessions.
“Working with the team has been a unique chance to apply my knowledge of sports psychology in a real-world setting,” Olivia Venditto, one of the BSc (Hons) sport and exercise psychology students involved, says. “It has inspired me to continue pursuing my passion for supporting other athletes.”
Practice-led learning is not a new initiative at Southampton Solent. With more than 200 qualifications on offer across its four schools – health and sport; creative industries; technology and maritime; and business, law and society – the university’s 11,000 students have always been offered opportunities to apply their skills and knowledge to practical settings. But it’s an approach that’s now formally embedded into its strategy, with the institution announcing its objective to be the best practice-led university in the UK by 2035.
“Practice-led learning is all about connecting your educational experience with the real world,” says Sarah Jones, pro-vice chancellor for education at Southampton Solent. “That helps so much in terms of employability, engaging students and giving meaning to their work. I always get a buzz when I walk about the campus and see lots of active learning. It’s really exciting.”
It is also having an impact on the university’s scores. In 2025, Southampton Solent climbed more than 20 places in the league tables published by the Guardian and the Sunday Times. It was also recently ranked the best in Hampshire for teaching and academic support, in the latest National Student Survey. The feedback highlighted particular strengths in learning opportunities and overall student experience.
Practice-led learning is woven through every school, Jones adds. Beyond training with the army’s women’s football team, students have the opportunity to work on live briefs with clients in the media, run rehabilitation clinics in partnership with the NHS, or report on a live football game, such as that between Real Madrid and Southampton Saints under-21s at St Mary’s stadium in the city. At a classroom level, simulators are used in nursing and maritime studies, giving students a safe place to practise new skills.
Those opportunities can stretch into the holidays too. Recently, Solent students went behind the scenes at some of the UK’s biggest festivals, including Glastonbury, Boardmasters and Camp Bestival. Working with Solent Productions, the university’s in-house production company, students took on various roles, from broadcast engineers and production coordinators, to documentary film-makers and AV tech assistants.
Oscar Beale, a film and television degree student, worked as a tech assistant at Boardmasters festival, where he fixed cameras, set them up and made sure they were working. “I got to see all the main acts, see all the lighting and sound guys at work – it’s a really good insight into the world of live events.”
These sorts of opportunities don’t just boost students’ confidence and employability credentials, Jones says. They also forge closer ties between the university and its surrounding community. For example, the law school recently launched a housing and family law clinic in partnership with a local solicitors’ firm. “It shows that the benefits of practice-led learning don’t just go one way,” she says. “This isn’t only about students getting great experiences … it’s also for people in the surrounding areas to work with our students and receive free legal advice with support from the law firm. It’s good for our whole community.”
In terms of challenges, Jones says there has been no shortage of community partners to work with, or any pushback from lecturers who would rather stick to classroom teaching. “We have that culture where colleagues believe in this approach and will really go for it. Our courses lend themselves to practice-led learning but that doesn’t mean students don’t do any writing, because they do. They’re still doing critical thinking, dissertations and projects.” The biggest challenge, she adds, is probably helping young students build the confidence to try being hands on, early in their university experience.
In the future, Jones hopes to widen the university’s global reach, collaborating with international partners to expand the opportunities available to students. Recently, students from film, TV, sports and health courses joined forces with universities in Australia and the US to take part in a 24-hour broadcast challenge to mark World COPD day, which raises awareness of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “There is so much evidence about how international experiences throughout university can really help employability,” Jones says. “That’s where we can really start pushing our approach and tying it in with that global connectedness.”
Her advice to other university leaders interested in practice-led learning would be to consider how it fits into the wider context of the student experience. “You can’t do things for the sake of it. Practice-led learning means you need to think about how you’re building curiosity, how you’re building confidence, and how you’re building impact. But you also have to do the reflection afterwards to cement the whole learning experience. When it works, it’s fantastic.”
Find out more about Southampton Solent University’s range of practice-led courses – and how to apply
