•Dallas discusses the importance of making research a vital component of the teaching process from the perspective of a senior academic, and demonstrates how this seems to have yielded positive results. There are three key elements that emerge from this chapter. First, the many skills that students stand to gain from research-based teaching and their immediate applicability to careers beyond education. Second, an emphasis on some form of tangible output that the student can use within a CV to demonstrate the benefit of the partnership. Third, the importance of involving industry (or third parties more broadly) in the student-led research process.

The student–staff partnerships discussed in the chapter are therefore more of a three-way partnership, which start with staff and students, but aim eventually to include partners outside of academia. Tangible outputs are a useful and important part of distinguishing these partnerships from industry-led workshops, careers sessions and other sessions that students may already attend.

•This chapter focuses predominantly on the hard sciences, but, as a potential benefit I see wider applicability in the social sciences that goes some way to solving the challenge of the potentially narrow appeal of research-led partnerships involving industry. How, for example, might a religious studies student benefit from an industry partnership? Do such students find themselves dissuaded from taking part in research-based education when the outputs that researchers in their field produce tend to be abstract, esoteric publications? How can industry help all students to learn skills that will help them with their degree and career plans? The danger is that certain disciplines may feel alienated, or disinclined to develop such partnerships due to a perceived lack of relevance to their discipline, or a lack of confidence in finding ways of making them relevant.