Beyond the challenge: Exploring student, lecturer, and stakeholder challenges with challenge-based learning

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is recognized in higher education for addressing societal demands and enhancing student performance. Existing literature discusses CBL’s efficacy, yet participant challenges are underexplored. Exploring this research gap is crucial to advance the development of CBL as an increasingly adopted educational approach across various disciplines. This study, involving 6 university teachers, 39 bachelor students, and 6 external stakeholders in an educational sciences CBL course, aims to identify and analyze these challenges. Using a classification system based on micro-, meso-, and macro-levels, challenges are categorized by their scale and scope of influence. Findings highlight challenges for lecturers in theory-practice bridging and for students in group work, stakeholder communication, and time management. Stakeholders stress challenges in interactions with students and lecturers, time management, and the theory-practice gap. This research advances understanding of the multifaceted challenges in CBL by offering a detailed analysis and introducing a novel classification framework, which delivers actionable insights for enhancing implementation and bridging critical gaps in existing literature.