In an ever-changing and increasingly competitive environment, tertiary educ
ation institutions are continually looking at: methods to improve their tea
ching and attract students to their courses. Students likewise are becoming
more selective when choosing an institution in which to study and are more
focused on the longer-term employability offered by various courses. This
paper looks at this changing environment from both the business and educati
on perspectives, and examines one exercise, an Information Retrieval Exerci
se, which is attempting to link education closer to the world of work, by p
roviding students with the relevant transferable skills. The empirical rese
arch conducted among the students on completion of the exercise gave very p
ositive results, with students feeling that their interpersonal skills had
been greatly enhanced and that innovative teaching methods such as these pr
ovided them with a competitive advantage when entering the job market. In a
ddition to satisfying students' requirements, the research results also sho
w that exercises of this type more fully meet the needs of the concept of '
deep learning', where students are given a more participative part in their
educational process. We conclude that future educational curricula will in
clude an increasing number of action-based approaches, so providing a more
even balance between the theoretical and practical elements of education.