Integrating formula student into design education â bridging the gap between theory and practice

Design methodology is a rather abstract, yet very important, aspect of engineering design. This leads to the acceptance of such topics in education being rather low among students. The combination of theoretical contents and practical courses is a very promising approach to learning how to benefit from the use of design methodology and thus being able to estimate it. In this paper a concept is presented on how such a combination of theory and practice can be realized. It is based on the integration of student competitions – in particular Formula Student – into different courses of engineering design education ranging from examples in lectures to development projects in practical courses. Apart from these aspects students are being motivated to participate in student competitions and learn to apply a structured development process and appropriate methods in their daily work.