“It's a different motivation altogether”: Students’ experience of formula student compared with curriculum-based PBL within a single university

Abstract

Formula Student (FS) is a major international engineering design competition that offers students a highly authentic, large-scale project experience. While prior research demonstrates that engineering design competitions enhance student learning, less is known about how students experience FS compared with curriculum-based project-based learning (PBL). This qualitative study draws on semi-structured interviews with ten current and former FS participants at a single university and employs thematic analysis to examine this relationship. Findings indicate that participants experienced FS as a qualitatively different form of engineering practice, with motivation emerging as the central mechanism underpinning engagement and learning. While initial participation was driven by intrinsic interest in motorsport, sustained engagement was supported by authenticity that encompassed personal meaning, professional context, real-world experience, collaborative community and impact. In contrast, curriculum-based projects were described as short-term, constrained, predominantly grade-driven, with authenticity limited to simulated professional contexts. The study contributes by demonstrating how authenticity operates as a mechanism for sustained motivation and offers implications for the design of more engaging and educationally powerful engineering curricula.

Introduction

Formula Student (FS), and its US equivalent Formula SAE, is one of the world's major engineering design competitions. It provides students with the opportunity to work in large, multidisciplinary teams to design and build a race car, offering an authentic form of project-based learning (PBL). ¹ Research on engineering design competitions consistently reports substantial student learning benefits, including enhanced engagement, discipline-specific skills, and the development of key graduate attributes.^2–4

Professional bodies and the engineering education community likewise advocate for integrating PBL within engineering curricula.^5–7 However, critiques highlight that many current implementations are confined to individual modules or short, discipline-specific tasks, ⁸ aligning with Savin-Baden's classification of ‘problem-based learning on a shoestring’. ⁹ These short-term, course-level approaches may fall short of providing the sustained, authentic, complex learning experiences advocated by professional bodies, and that competitions like FS appear to deliver.

Against this backdrop, this study explores how students at a single university experienced FS relative to curriculum-based PBL. By analysing these contrasting experiences, we aim to identify what makes FS motivationally powerful and educationally rich, and what insights this offers for designing more effective PBL environments in engineering curricula. This extends existing research on engineering design competitions from a focus on outcomes to the mechanisms that shape students’ experiences.

Engineering design competitions and authenticity

Formula Student (FS) is an international competition organised by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers where university students design and build a single-seat racing car. FS culminates in a competitive race each July at the Silverstone circuit in the UK, where over 100 teams participate. Teams must redesign their vehicles annually in response to FS rule-book changes. This authentic practice is intended to inspire students, promote innovation and connect students with the wider engineering community. ¹⁰ Within universities, FS is typically structured as a student-driven and student-organised extra-curricular activity. ¹¹ In some cases, FS is linked with the formal curriculum through elective modules or final-year design projects. ⁴

Dimensions of authenticity in engineering education

While authenticity in learning has received much research interest, reviews have recommended that researchers be more attentive to definitions and dimensions of authenticity.^12,13 We consider an authentic problem to be one where the primary purpose and source of existence ‘should be a need, a practice, a task, a quest and a thirst existing in a context outside of schooling and educational purposes’. ¹² Reviews of the authenticity literature have identified the following dimensions of authentic practice (1) personal meaning (2) professional context, (3) real experiences and (4) community or impact.^12,13 Authentic projects that reflect all four dimensions therefore seek to leverage students’ interests (personal meaning), align with how professionals in the discipline think and act (professional context), resemble real-world, open-ended complex disciplinary or interdisciplinary problems (real experience) and require connections with a community of practitioners or have an influence beyond the classroom (community or impact). The analysis by Nachtigall et al. ¹³ revealed that none of the studies included in their review encompassed all four dimensions with real experiences dominating (25 studies), followed by professional context (7 studies). A similar discussion exists within the problem-based learning literature, where it is recognised that ‘all problems are not equal’. ¹⁴ Researchers in this space have developed a taxonomy of problems that range from closed-ended, task and discipline-bound exercises to complex, open-ended, interdisciplinary challenges completed by teams.^9,14,15 Reviews of PBL implementations within engineering education indicate that discipline-bound, course-level implementations dominate. ⁸ Consequently, engineering design competitions are attractive as they offer the potential to realise a highly authentic learning experience in a complex, interdisciplinary setting.

Learning impact of design competitions and Formula Student

Although the research base is limited, studies examining engineering design competitions consistently report a substantial impact on student learning. This impact stems from the experiential and problem-based learning nature of the experience, which involves intensive hands-on application and teamwork.^2,16 The real-world context pushes students beyond rote memorisation as it engages learners in complex, open-ended tasks that require creativity, design, fabrication, and continuous learning.^1,4 Learners gain technical skills alongside interdisciplinary knowledge.^2,17 Crucially, engineering design competitions are recognised as effective platforms for cultivating graduate attributes that are critical for modern engineers including communication, teamwork, creativity, critical thinking, decision-making, and professionalism.^1,2,4 For instance, Abdulwahed and Hasna ² found that students reported a statistically significant higher satisfaction with their development of problem solving, decision making, analytical thinking, innovation, design and teamwork through engineering design competition participation compared with traditional university courses.

Research focused on FS is especially limited. Davies, ³ Lai et al. ¹⁸ and Talmi et al. ¹⁰ each explored student participation in FS. Using a mixed methods, Talmi et al. ¹⁰ report that FS fostered intrinsic motivation by supporting students’ basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness. Specifically, FS developed: thinking skills such as self-regulated learning, decision making, critical and holistic thinking; working skills such as ICT and management; and social skills namely interpersonal relationships and collaboration/teamwork. Davies, ³ drawing on semi-structured interviews, similarly identified that participating in FS supported management, interpersonal and communication skills, as well as the application of theoretical knowledge and development of practical knowledge. Lai et al. ¹⁸ confirmed many of these themes e.g., intrinsic motivation, collaboration and teamwork and project management, and further highlighted multi/interdisciplinary collaboration, independent learning efficacy, and a deeper learner. More recently, Lande ¹⁹ highlighted the open-ended nature of the project work, noting that it provides opportunities to experiment along with the freedom to fail.

FS curriculum integration

While FS is primarily an extra-curricular, student-led activity, its strong educational impact has prompted discussion about integrating FS into the engineering curriculum. Arguments in favour of integration recognise the significant effort and time invested by students, and the potential to leverage the authentic, high-impact experience provided and the graduate competencies FS develops.^2,4,11,17,18 Arguments against integration highlight the significant resource demands required, including financial costs, the need for specialised facilities, and the high time commitment required from both students and faculty advisors.^2,16,17 Formal integration typically involves integrating the design competition within a senior-level capstone design project,^4,17 or creating an elective course tailored to the design competition. ¹¹ These formal structures typically impose mandatory deliverables and position faculty in a mentoring or advisory role.^4,16,17 These debates suggest that engineering educators view FS as offering something distinct from curriculum-based PBL, yet no research has examined how students themselves experience FS relative to the PBL they encounter in their degree programmes.

Contribution

Although prior studies demonstrate that FS participation supports a wide range of technical, social, and motivational outcomes, research explaining how these benefits arise is limited. Existing studies have largely focused on outcomes rather than mechanisms. In particular, there is little insight into the distinctive features of FS as a learning environment or how these features shape students’ motivation, engagement, and learning. Moreover, while PBL is widely embedded within engineering curricula, no research has examined how students experience FS in relation to these curriculum-based PBL contexts. This represents a notable gap, and understanding this relationship is important for determining whether FS simply replicates existing curricular approaches or whether it offers a qualitatively different experience. Accordingly, this study investigates how students at Munster Technological University (MTU) experience Formula Student, and how they perceive this experience in relation to curriculum-based projects.

Research method

Qualitative methods situated within an interpretivist paradigm are used to explore participants’ experience, meanings and perspectives. ²⁰ This approach aligns directly with the stated research question, which focuses on capturing participants’ experience. Qualitative inquiry enables participants to raise issues that matter most to them and approaches that gather ‘thick descriptions representing the complexity of situations are preferable to simplistic ones’ e.g., surveys. ²⁰ Participants’ experiences, behaviours and attitudes are often too complex to be accurately captured using quantitative methods alone. ²¹

FS within Munster Technological University (MTU)

Within MTU, Formula Student was founded in September 2023. Students from various disciplines and programme levels can join, and the society operates as an extra-curricular activity. Many undergraduate final-year capstone and postgraduate projects within the Department of Mechanical Engineering focus on a design element of MTU's FS car. In 2024, MTU entered FS for the first time and competed in the Concept Class where they were judged on Engineering Design, Cost and Manufacturing, and a Business Plan. The team finished in the top 30 and the team also won the Michael Royce Learn & Compete award.

Participants

The participants for this study were current and former members of the MTU FS society. Recruitment involved inviting current and recently graduated FS students to participate in the study and ten participants volunteered. This sample size aligns with the 9 to 17 participants identified in the systematic review conducted by Hennink and Kaiser ²² as appropriate for interview studies. As summarised in Table 1, six participants were current Mechanical Engineering students and four were alumni members. Alumni were included as they could reflect on the longer-term relevance of FS to their current roles. Participants held different positions within the FS team including design and team-lead roles, ensuring a range of experiences and perspectives.

Table 1.

Study participants and their pseudonym.

Participant ID	Position
Y2_Steering	2nd Year Mechanical Engineering
Y2_Cockpit	2nd Year Mechanical Engineering
Y2_Electrical	2nd Year Mechanical Engineering
Y3_Team_Lead	3rd Year Mechanical Engineering
Y4_Team_Lead	4th Year Mechanical Engineering
Y4_Administration	4th Year Mechanical Engineering
PG_Team_Lead	Alumni - Postgraduate Student at a different university
G_Suspension	Alumni - Graduated and working in Industry
G_Aerodynamics	Alumni - Graduated and working in Industry
G_Team_Lead	Alumni - Graduated and working in Industry

Data collection

Semi-structured interviews were selected as the data collection instrument as they balance participant voice and consistency across interviews. ²³ Table 2 presents the core interview questions. Two pilot interviews were conducted to refine these questions and develop additional follow-up prompts to explore participants’ curriculum and FS experiences in greater depth. Within the curriculum participants experience in-class, problem-solving exercises and undertake an individual, final-year capstone project. For the purposes of this research, neither is considered curriculum-based PBL as the former requires very little inquiry and the latter is undertaken individually. Therefore, as evidenced by Table 2, during the interviews the term ‘larger team-based projects’ was used to capture the essence of curriculum-based PBL experiences that were more likely to approach the type of activities experienced in FS and aligned with our research interest. In most cases, the context (e.g., class-room based exercise or collaborative project) was clear from participants’ description.

Table 2.

Questions used to guide the semi-structured interviews.

What has been your more memorable experience from being part of FS?

What was your motivation for joining FS?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of being part of FS?

What have you gained from being part of FS, which you didn’t get from your programme of study?

Throughout your time as a student in MTU, have you been involved in larger team-based projects? What were these experiences like?

How does FS compare to these team-based projects which you have completed?

What has been your more memorable experience from being part of FS?

Ethical approval for this study was received from the university's Research Ethics Committee prior to data collection. All participants provided Informed Consent. The interviews were conducted on-line by the first author, video-recorded, with an average duration of 24 min. Recordings were automatically transcribed, manually edited, de-identified and pseudo-anonymised. Each participant was assigned a unique identifier (see Table 1). In line with continuous consent, transcripts were shared with participants to confirm accuracy and ensure that no identifying data remained. The identifiable recordings were deleted once the final transcripts (The de-identified data is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.29114546.v1%0A%0A) were verified.

Data analysis

A qualitative approach to data analysis was adopted, following Braun and Clarke's ²⁴ framework for thematic analysis. Thematic analysis aims to identify repeated patterns in the data via a process of data familiarisation, code generation, identifying themes, reviewing themes, naming themes and writing the output. ²⁴ The analysis was undertaken in two phases. This analysis consisted of an iterative process of becoming familiar with the data by listening to the recordings (first author), editing and reviewing the transcripts (first author) and re-reading the transcripts (both authors). Patterns related to the research question were then extracted and coded and hence coding was inductive and data-driven. Phase 1 was conducted by the first author and resulted in findings related to outcomes e.g., development of student competencies. Phase 2, conducted by the second author, involved returning to the data and focusing on the mechanisms that enabled this learning. The resulting codes were categorised to identify an overarching concept. This conceptual theme was reviewed to assess how well it captured the coded data with respect to the research question and whether it worked across the full dataset. ²⁴ Throughout this process, both authors met repeatedly to share and discuss the independent analyses and agree the final analytic framework.

Findings

In this study, participants experienced FS as a motivationally rich, authentic environment that drove engagement and learning - where motivation refers to the desire to invest time and effort in an activity. ¹⁰ When reflecting on their FS experience, participants highlight a deep or long-term interest in the area which fuelled engagement. For example, Y4_Team_Lead states how he has ‘been driving or building racing cars my whole life. I wanted to be involved in building a racing car in college. That's the coolest thing ever, in my opinion’. G_Suspension who completed his final year project on the aerodynamics of the Formula Student, noted that he was ‘passionate about it. Whereas if I was just doing any project for the sake of it, because I wanted to get a good grade, I probably wouldn’t be going in every day from eight to eight to get it done’. Others also contrast their experience of FS with curriculum projects. For instance, Y2_Electrical talks about how curriculum challenges feel ‘like a made-up problem just to be there - that you're able to solve the question. But here [FS] I feel a much bigger purpose. And it is actually much more enjoyable solving problems for the Formula Student car’ (Y2_Electrical). Similarly, Y3_Team_Lead contrasts the ‘real passion’ he feels towards Formula Student with his experience of curriculum projects: ‘Like, what motivates you to do [curriculum project]? Honestly, nothing much. Okay. Just the marks that I get. Just to pass the module and get a good grade - that is about the only motivation’.

For some, this intrinsic motivation was enhanced by the need to produce a deliverable and the competitive aspect of FS. For example, Y2_Cockpit thought that ‘the fact it's a competition makes people sort of feel like there's something on the line. They might not engage with it if there wasn’t a competition’. Most participants identified that attending the international competition event was their most memorable experience and served to renew this initial motivation. Y2_Cockpit identified how ‘walking in and around the paddocks and seeing the same paddocks that you’ll see on the TV being used for F1, and full of students crowded around the cars. It was incredible to see, it is incredible to talk to them’. Y4_Administration recalled seeing ‘…nearly professional-grade race cars, full aerodynamics and it's absolutely brilliant’ while for PG_Team_Lead it highlighted ‘what we could become’.

Several participants directly link motivational states with learning. Y2_Electrical observed that when he is intrinsically motivated ‘my brain remembers it better’. Conversely, Y3_Team_Lead highlights an impact of ‘not wanting to do the actual work’ associated with curriculum projects. He talks about how ‘we actually procrastinate a lot until the last moment’ and how ‘it's not the same amount of input’ i.e., effort. Similarly, PG_Team_Lead notes that when ‘people don't have interest’ and ‘if stuff starts going wrong, they're like, Oh, I didn't care in the first place, and they just submit whatever’. Across accounts, motivation appeared as a dynamic response to the distinctive features of FS. The following themes highlight dimensions of the FS experience - dimensions of authentic practice - that participants associated with this sustained motivation and deep engagement.

Real-world authenticity

Participants highlighted the real-world authenticity and the physical nature of FS and contrasted that with the abstract, routine or ‘made-up’ challenges typically posed in curriculum projects. As Y4_Team_Lead states ‘people want to be actually working on a real problem instead of, you know, you get a description and you do a design, but you never see the actual finished product’. The physicality of FS - the fact that ‘you can actually touch it in the end’ makes a difference. Functionality plays a role because ‘it's a different feeling to actually have a part or actually have software written up that does something. And you can actually see what it does’ (Y2_Electrical). It was also evident that the nature of the task interacts with and reinforces motivation. For example, the transactional way in which PG_Team_Lead shares his experience of curriculum projects suggests they did little to motivate him: ‘you do a meeting every week, and you present something, and at the end of it you make a prototype and then go home. And you know everyone's happy. Doesn't even have to work. It's just some things you threw together’. Participant Y2_Electrical also highlights how motivation interacts with the project context when contrasting curriculum projects with FS: ‘There are several projects most of them [run] over several weeks, and they involve a lot of hours. Most of them are fairly design based. So, you get just the question design, a component that can withstand these forces, and then we just go through it as a group, we do the calculations, and so on. The situation is that it's always very controlled. It's very constrained the approach, because the lecturer gives us a very strict list of how to go about solving the problem. It's pretty limiting in terms of expression and creative thinking. So, these projects aren't really that enjoyable because they feel so artificial and so under pressure.’ (Y2_Electrical). For this individual, tackling real-life problems ‘really gets me thinking like an actual engineer. And of course I get a lot more practical application of the knowledge, and that allows me to go more in-depth and understand what I’m actually doing’.

Scale and complexity

Participants described FS as operating on a scale and level of complexity far beyond curriculum-based projects. Y4_Team_Lead spoke about a ‘group of about 50 in there that I would be constantly talking to’ while throughout the interviews a range of sub-teams were identified (mechanical, electrical, business, low-voltage electrical, cockpit). Management involved a weekly meeting of the entire group, weekly meetings for the subgroups and the use of technology to support this process. Y3_Team_Lead talked about ‘a master spreadsheet that all the electrical sub teams keep … and from there I can see if everything's happening according to the plan’ while Y2_Cockpit spoke about a ‘Discord group that all the people are in and that's separated into subgroups’. G_Team_Lead recalled an experience where he was involved with ‘two other projects - the suspension and the wheel hubs … . I was asking for dimensions of the suspension height, but he couldn't give me those because the wheel hub hadn't given him the dimensions for the other side. So, there was a lot of back and forth… And you wouldn't see that in most other projects it's only really Formula Student that that brings that out, how you have to interact with other people’.

Many participants also viewed FS as a long-term endeavour e.g., ‘this is like a two-to-three year project right now’ (Y3_Team_Lead), ‘in two years time when we have the car built. But you're kind of working towards the goal’ (Y4_Administration). In contrast, curriculum projects were described as being ‘single semester, maybe with 3 or 4 people’ (PG_Team_Lead) or ‘there's maybe 6 to 8 of you. Sometimes you can tell half the team don't want to be there because they don't show up to any meeting’ (G_Team_Lead). The narrower brief, described by Y4_Team_Lead as ‘we get our problem, we design it up, we do a presentation or write a report. And then that's it’ that lacks a ‘start to finish, kind-of process’ meant that the workflow was very different. This same participant explained how in curriculum projects, assessment dictated what needed to be done e.g., ‘Oh, we have to have our safety analysis done for this week. So, we just do that this week’ while in FS ‘we're planning ahead to even after the competition in July’. Consequently, Y2_Steering identifies that ‘it's broad what you're learning’ in FS while Y3_Team_Lead identified learning about ‘project management. I don't think I would have gained that outside Formula Student’.

Autonomy & ownership

When discussing curriculum projects participants described a directed process in which ‘we're linearly guided through all the work that we have to do and how to do it. They [lecturers] kind-of tell us exactly what needs to be done’ (Y4_Administration). Similarly, Y2_Cockpit characterises curriculum projects as ‘straightforward’ because ‘the lecturer will tell you what they're kind of looking for, and as long as you obey that, then you'll be grand’ while Y2_Electrical uses language like ‘controlled’ and ‘constrained’ when describing the curriculum experience. In contrast, Y4_Administration observes that academic staff are not ‘directly involved’ in FS and ‘we kind-of have to nearly figure out our own methodology, like the entire way we do things. And we're still developing the best way to do all of the work to achieve our goals’. This autonomy required participants to take responsibility for their own learning. Y2_Steering noted that ‘instead being given the formulas and lectures, you actually have to do all the research yourself’ while in relation to the low-voltage side of the car Y2_Electrical talks about putting ‘a lot of time into that, and a lot of research’. G_Suspension commented how ‘the entire design of suspension would have been new to me, and I would have had to do a lot of self-directed learning. So, I think a main advantage of a Formula Student is learning how to teach yourself’. While Y4_Administration concedes that learning independently takes more time, he also highlights how ‘we'll learn more figuring it out for ourselves’ (Y4_Administration).

Collaboration and community

Participant's descriptions of collaboration within FS and within curriculum projects were notably different. Because participants were passionate about the topic, most genuinely contributed and supported each-other. Collective problem solving e.g., ‘we might spend entire meetings trying to figure out ideas’ (Y2_Steering) and ‘if someone's having an issue with their design, we could point them in the right direction’ (Y4_Team_Lead) characterised collaboration. Social events served to cement team cohesion e.g., ‘this week, on Thursday we'll watch a past very exciting race in Formula One together. So, we'll sit down, we have some pizza, some drinks, and we'll just chat and watch it’ (Y2_Electrical). Curriculum-based projects were frequently marked by unequal effort. G_Aerodynamics recalled how there ‘was 8 of us, and it was just 3 of us doing the work. So the [curriculum project] was traumatic’. This student attributed this unequal effort to members not caring because the group ‘kind-of lost interest in it’ and ‘nobody wanted to do it anymore’. Not surprisingly, G_Aerodynamics observed that the FS experience ‘gave me more of a perspective on how actually a good team works rather than someone trying to do all the work’.

While FS culminates in a competitive event, participants positioned FS as an engineering community. G_Suspension describes how ‘the community is quite tight together. People are willing to help each other out quite a lot. So, there's a lot of like networking there as well that you obviously wouldn't get the opportunity to do when you're in college’. The network predominantly consisted of FS societies at other universities e.g., ‘we’re in contact with TU Dublin, UCD [University College Dublin] and [the University of] Limerick’ (Y4_Administration) while Y2_Cockpit noted that ‘we had members talking to Hong Kong University, we had members talking to different universities in the UK’. While this network is especially valuable for newer teams, Y4_Administration was clear that ‘we’re all helping each other and giving each other advice’. Even at the competition, the atmosphere remained ‘quite open’ and collegial with G_Suspension observing that ‘you can walk around and have a look’.

Discussion, implications, limitations and conclusion

Participants described Formula Student (FS) as a qualitatively different learning experience from curriculum-based project work. Where curriculum projects were experienced as instrumental and assessment-driven, FS was seen as meaningful, personally relevant, and at times transformative. Our analysis suggests that motivation is the key mechanism differentiating these experiences. Participants were initially drawn to FS through an intrinsic interest in motorsport, but this motivation was sustained through the authentic, large-scale, autonomous, and collaborative nature of the work. Participants consistently emphasised the perceived value of the task, the real-world consequences of their decisions, the autonomy they exercised, and the support received from their team and the wider FS community. The resulting motivational cycle - summarised in Figure 1 - showed how authentic participation in an engineering community of practice generated and sustained engagement and deep learning.

Figure 1.

Fs motivation through participating in an authentic engineering community of practice.

Figure 1, which was inductively identified from this analysis, aligns well with the dimensions of authenticity identified by Strobel et al. ¹² and Nachtigall et al.. ¹³ Personal meaning was evident from participants’ sustained interest and passion for motorsport, while professional context was reflected in the open-ended, interdisciplinary, large-scale, longer duration and largely autonomous nature of the project context. Real experience was embodied in the design and construction of a physical racing car, and participants connected with a professional community while the impact clearly extended beyond the classroom. In contrast, participants’ experience of curriculum-based PBL lacked personal meaning, real experience, community and impact. While authentic and problem-based learning can be implemented with fidelity,^25–27 reviews of both research bases have identified that realisations are often limited to single dimensions of authenticity or discipline-bound course-level problems.^8,13 This limited realisation may negatively impact both motivation and cognitive outcomes. ¹³ Moreover, as Nachtigall et al. ¹³ suggest that authentic assessment is associated with stronger cognitive outcomes, the formal evaluation processes within FS (e.g., professional design reviews and competitive performance) may further reinforce deep learning. Our findings therefore contribute by highlighting how authenticity operates as a mechanism for sustaining motivation.

The findings from this study complement those of Talmi et al., ¹⁰ who show that FS supports the basic psychological needs identified in self-determination theory (SDT): autonomy, competence, and relatedness. ²⁸ Our results support this interpretation and extend it. Autonomy was evident in participants’ responsibility for decision-making along with their commitment to research and independent learning; competence developed through their work on challenging, real-world tasks; and relatedness evident through teamwork and the wider FS community. However, our study adds a novel contribution by examining FS in contrast to curriculum-based PBL experiences. Participants clearly differentiated the motivational dynamics of FS from those of curriculum projects, describing the latter as constrained, short-term, and primarily grade-oriented. This contrast spotlights the role of motivation not just as an outcome of FS, but as the mechanism through which FS cultivates powerful learning experiences.

The deep learning described by participants aligns with broader research on engineering design competitions.^1,2,4,18 Consistent with this literature, participants reported developing technical, organisational, and collaborative skills, as well as gaining experience applying theory in complex, open-ended contexts. These findings reinforce arguments that design competitions authentically develop competence, belonging, professional ways of thinking and engineering identity. However, our results extend this literature by demonstrating how authenticity works to generate sustained motivation, which in turn drives these learning outcomes. Rather than documenting learning outcomes alone, our study clarifies why these outcomes emerge and why, for our participants, FS was experienced so differently from curriculum-based project work.

Implications for curriculum design

Participants in this study did not describe curriculum projects that addressed dimensions of authenticity or that engaged them in ‘uncertain, complex, open-ended workplace problems’. ⁸ Savin-Baden^9,29 along with Guerra et al. ⁶ argue that not all PBL implementations are equal, while Kolmos ¹⁵ suggests that narrow discipline-bound, short duration, course or task-level implementations are ‘hardly PBL, but might be an active learning methodology’. Given that course-level PBL accounts for almost 70% of PBL implementations in engineering, ⁸ and that few authentic learning scenarios address multiple dimensions ¹³ our findings suggest the need to consider broader adoption of curriculum-level PBL that allow for sustained, interdisciplinary and authentic practice. ⁶ Institutional support for engineering academics tasked with realising such curriculum change may also be required. ³⁰

All participants chose to join FS, and their intrinsic interest played a central role in sustaining their motivation and effort. This suggests that embedding personal choice into course-level PBL activities — such as allowing students to select problems or contexts — may enhance engagement. Emerging research supports designing learning environments that offer choice and flexibility ³¹ and demonstrates that course-level projects can be perceived as both authentic and engaging when thoughtfully designed. ³²

While participants valued autonomy and self-directed learning, they also identified ‘the time commitment you have to put into Formula Student’ (Y2_Steering) as a challenge. This highlights a tension: autonomy deepens learning but slows pace. Engineering educators designing more autonomous PBL environments may need to adjust expectations, pacing, and scaffolding to accommodate slower but more meaningful learning trajectories.

Research limitations

This study involved a small group of participants from a single university, limiting its generalisability. Participants self-selected, both in choosing to join FS and in volunteering for this study, which may amplify the role of intrinsic interest. Extending this research to other institutions and to students engaged in larger-scale curriculum PBL would strengthen external validity. Future work could also examine models for integrating authentic, complex, long-term projects into the curriculum and evaluate their impact on motivation and learning.

Conclusion

In this small-scale study, participants experienced FS as a motivationally rich, authentic engineering practice, distinct from curriculum-based project work. Motivation emerged as the mechanism that drives engagement and learning, sustained by the FS environment that encompassed all dimensions of authentic practice, namely personal meaning, professional context, real experiences, community and impact. While curriculum-based PBL can also reflect all of these dimensions,^25–27 recent systematic reviews suggest that most realisations fall short.^8,13 Consistent with these reviews, our findings highlight potential limitations associated with short, course-level PBL implementations and suggest that engineering education may benefit from adopting more authentic, complex, and choice-driven project structures. Incorporating these features into curriculum design has the potential to enhance engagement, deepen learning, and better prepare students for professional practice.