Sustaining complex projects by linking in- and off-curriculum elements: The BRSU Racing Engineer Certificate

In contrast to traditional ways on how to teach engineering students, modern concepts include problem-based learning approaches, offering the possibility to include project courses in the curriculum. As a step beyond, large international competition formats arose in recent years, offering very complex tasks that are not feasible to be treated in one (or few) regular courses only. That is, because they are often organized by industry-related consortia, aiming for a different education perspective that increases employability. In a natural way, such projects value deeper understanding of theory modules, but emphasize on the transfer to practical solutions. Since the origin does not come from university staff, participation in such competitions is based on student efforts and organization, creating a unique level of demand and ownership that can only be inflamed by very high motivation. In order to sustain such large-scale projects from the faculty’s perspective, the combination of in- and off-curricular elements can help to lower the students’ workload to feasible levels. Seamlessly integrated, this enhances learning experiences and helps to keep project members highly motivated and productive. In this paper, we present the idea and impact of an additional graduation certificate as a means to stabilize such large-scale projects by providing a framework and enhancing motivation in the students. By way of doing so, the university can give formal credit for the informal learning and valuable knowledge acquired in off-curricular activities. We discuss which certificate elements were determined to be useful and how our findings were solidified by a detailed survey. Even though this work centers on a specific example, we will emphasize the general conclusions that can be drawn and which guidelines might be transferred to similar other projects.