Students as Freight Architects: Reverse Mentorship for Experiential Logistics Pedagogy

This study investigates how reverse mentorship, experiential learning, and student-led gamification can enhance freight forwarding education in a Malaysian private university. Using a qualitative exploratory case study design, the research examined a single cohort of undergraduate logistics students enrolled in a freight forwarding module. Reverse mentorship was implemented by positioning students as co-designers and leaders of learning activities, including planning and executing a field trip, preparing a logistics budget, and developing a logistics-themed board game. Data were collected through focus group interviews, reflective journals, and non-participant observations, then analysed using thematic analysis supported by NVivo 14 with inter-coder reliability checks. The findings reveal four overarching themes: student agency, applied logistics thinking, peer engagement, and reflective learning. Students reported increased learning autonomy and leadership, improved ability to apply freight forwarding elements such as reliability, speed, accessibility, cost, and transit time, and stronger collaborative problem-solving through peer-to-peer learning dynamics. Gamification further reinforced conceptual retention by translating freight trade-offs into interactive decision scenarios. The study contributes a practice-oriented pedagogical model for logistics education and suggests that universities can strengthen graduate readiness by embedding structured student-led experiential activities, supported by facilitator-style teaching and reflective assessment design.