It is a common misconception that enterprise education is all Dragon’s Den-style pitches, pop-up shops, and hackathons. Great activities, but ones that colleagues may or may not deem relevant for their students. That can be a barrier to learner engagement, especially in FE when enterprise activities are predominantly booked for groups by lecturers or progress coaches. At Bridgend College, all enterprise activities are mapped to the Welsh Government’s ACRO Model of enterprise skills and the College’s ‘Core Skills for Success’, for which learners can be awarded digital badges. Although these are useful ways of demonstrating impact, broadening the scope of activities on offer to capture the imagination of both staff and learners has proved an even more effective way to increase awareness and widen participation. Essentially, realising that enterprise education could be murder was a game-changer. 

David Bolton highlighted leadership, decision-making and initiative as key enterprise skills in his Director’s Blog. Immerse students in an interactive, fictitious crime-solving activity that develops these, in addition to gamifying the Welsh Government’s ACRO skills and you’ve created a compelling pedagogical tool.

Designed to shine a light on core entrepreneurial behaviours, the ACRO model comprises four pillars – Attitude, Creativity, Relationships and Organisation. A ‘cold case’ simulation can be mapped onto this framework and is a particularly useful way of encouraging learners to reflect on their preferred methods of learning and team roles in a post-activity debrief. 

Attitude: Investigators rarely receive data in a clean, linear fashion. When assessing how successful the team was in solving the crime, learners must reflect on their own contribution to the overall result, analysing the levels of self-confidence, self- belief, motivation and determination they displayed and how these contributed to the outcome. This increases their self-knowledge and ensures that all the ACRO skills in the Attitude category are considered.

Creativity: Solving a cold case requires lateral thinking and it is by it’s very nature a problem to to solve. Teams must generate diverse hypotheses, look at seemingly mundane details or objects from unexpected angles, and connect disparate pieces of information to construct a viable theory. Finding a suspect with means, motive and opportunity requires both creative and critical thinking.  

Relationships: Working together against the clock with no clear instructions about where to start except to find all the evidence needed for a thorough investigation, is a great way to identify participants’ preferred team roles. How each individual reacts when they inevitably hit dead ends or get distracted by a red herring can also be a very helpful way to support learners to start articulating their transferable skills, something with which FE learners often struggle. 

Organisation: Crime scenes represent high-volume, chaotic information environments. Teams must systematically plan strategies, delegate tasks, prioritise critical evidence, and manage scarce time efficiently to deliver results. A lack of organisation is very likely to result in frustration and an unsolved crime so this ACRO area can prove crucial.

In addition to developing ACRO skills,muerder mystery activities also align with the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) Guidance for Higher Education Providers.It defines enterprise education as cultivating the “behaviours, attributes, and competencies” that enable students to transition smoothly from ideas to practical action. The QAA emphasizes decision-making supported by critical analysis and reflective judgement. By placing students in a challenge-led simulation, educators shift them from being passive recipients of risk theory to being active practitioners of real-world evaluation.

The Ultimate Post-Mortem

The true breakthrough in learning occurs during the structured, facilitator-led debrief—the educational post-mortem.This critical reflection of the simulated detective work allows learners to reflect on communication failures, leadership dynamics, and cognitive biases in a safe environment. Affording students the opportunity to analyse the skills they used in a fun and engaging, yet deceptively complex activity is all the proof I need that enterprise education can be murder.

References 

The ACRO model outlined in the Youth Entrepreneurship Strategy 

The QAA Guidance QAA Guidance