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

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.