All universities strive to prepare their students as well as possible for their future careers. In engineering especially, it is vital to establish a strong connection between theoretical topics like maths and physics to real and complex engineering problems. A widespread approach in engineering education is to offer students practical project modules as a mandatory part of their studies. Beyond that, some faculties include international competitions in their curricula. Although this approach is generally viewed as effective, competitions require a lot of resources, which makes them hard to sustain. We have found that it is worthwhile for students and faculty to implement more than the minimum requirements to make hands-on projects a success story. Therefore, we outline how to elevate projects to a more professional level and what benefits result from a higher degree of professionalism. Furthermore, we review the steps taken to get to that level in a best-practice manner. We illustrate that these steps also lead to enhanced employability and an improved reputation, more external collaboration partners, and closely connected alumni for the university. To support our claims regarding those benefits, we asked representatives of supporting companies and the faculty to provide testimony regarding the cooperation with the student project. Additionally, we conducted a survey among students that clearly indicates how students profit from a strong connection to the faculty.

Interdisciplinary, complex projects with real-world characteristics offer students great opportunities to expand their knowledge, especially if it goes beyond their core competencies. For engineers, such projects can be an additional motivation to acquire non-technical competencies and soft skills they can use in their professional lives. In traditional engineering programs, access to such additional knowledge is rarely available, maybe only in supplementary courses which are not part of the regular study program. We have developed a new, customized elective module on cost and production management to close this potential gap. The course is geared towards job-related requirements by adjusting it to an extracurricular global student competition. The theoretical content was purposefully selected to directly apply to closely related real-world problems that students must solve in this competition. Specifically, lectures on cost and production management techniques were self-reliantly prepared and presented to the rest of the course by each participant after prior consultation with peer instructors. The professional docent mainly acted as a mentor and helped give the contents an overall structure and perspective. Thus, the course setting and content allowed engineering students to engage with highly useful non-technical topics in an activating, peer-centered manner. The core element of our teaching approach is that students acquire their knowledge through problem-based learning and engage with the subject matter in an activating way. In this manuscript, we show how participants have perceived our teaching approach and discuss the requirements and opportunities for making it a profound learning experience. We also discuss how the connection to specific technical aspects was used as a means to enhance learning in non-technical courses.

To successfully teach students utilizing a project-based learning approach, lecturers need deep technical expertise and experience, soft skills, and didactic competencies, usually obtained over years of a professional career path. In this paper, we show how advanced high potential senior students that participate intensively in international engineering competitions can successfully act as self-reliant peer teachers for first-year students after receiving training in teaching and leadership skills. We explain how such high potential peers can set up a tailor-made project teaching approach based on their content-wise semi-professional expertise. We also highlight their preparation for this task and their own benefits from this activity. In particular, computer-aided design and electronic circuit board design were taught by the peer lecturers based on examples from their expertise in semi-professional formula race car design. At the same time, professors acted solely as mentors and course organizers. Performance analysis showed that not only did the course participants achieve excellent learning outcomes, but also that the peer teachers benefited enormously: In focus groups and interviews we learned that the high potential students obtained a much deeper understanding of the topics they taught self-reliantly. The experience of successfully teaching complex technical knowledge also resulted in increased self-confidence and prepared them to take over responsibility in future leadership positions. Furthermore, various prerequisites for a successful peer teaching approach were identified, e.g., the motivation to teach innovative content required in professional environments and a close long-term connection between student groups and the faculty.In conclusion, our faculty views the participation of expert students in the teaching process as a greatly beneficial addition to the overall course program. It gives student teachers and learners desirable opportunities for new learning experiences and professors the possibility to concentrate on personal mentoring activities.

Motivation to learn is a cornerstone for learning success. It can be promoted through active participation, reference to the topic, and a good learning atmosphere. One way to ensure an active role for the learner is through project-based learning approaches, which offer the opportunity to work on complex tasks that go far beyond classic theoretical modules. A rarely tried approach in an academic context to foster a good learning atmosphere and students’ connection to the topic would be to use highly qualified peers as instructors.As we strive to increase the level of understanding, we explore how peer teaching by specially trained senior student teachers can be set up in application-oriented project modules to augment learning outcomes for engineering university learners. To do so, the modules “Applied Computer-Aided Design” and “Applied Electronic Circuit Design” were chosen. We investigate in which respect the learning process is altered if advanced peers act as teachers. We also discuss what abilities are prerequisites for the students to act as peer teachers. They include experience in team leadership and project management, accompanied by strong technical skills.A survey-based analysis shows that participants significantly improved their technical skills compared to their level before the project. Furthermore, the data clearly indicates that learners felt more comfortable participating actively in the course if it was taught by a peer familiar with specific real-world applications compared to when it was led by professors. In addition, students were motivated because they were able to choose their own project as well as being encouraged and assisted in working on their own. In conclusion, we show that course modules taught by specifically trained and selected peer teachers can be a valuable addition to an overall engineering curriculum.