[bsilvereagle]

In America, the trend has been towards industry sponsored 'Capstone Projects'. A company comes in with a problem that may or may not need to be solved, students are put into teams to 'simulate the real world' and are given a semester or two to solve the problem for the client.

[wodenokoto]

I see that as fitting the same bill. You can't expect bachelor students to produce publisheable quality work, but solving a problem (if it includes gathering data and choosing theory to apply) is research within a very limited scope.