Co-Curricular Activities and their Role in Supporting Experiential Learning

This paper presents a study into engineering competitions as a type of co-curricular activity that enhances student engagement and skills. The motive of the study is to evaluate the benefits of three selected major competitions and compare these benefits to those published in the literature. In addition, student feedback was collected and analyzed to understand the major benefits of these competitions as seen by students. Ten major benefits were summarized and listed based on the literature search. The three competitions under study were analyzed and found to meet the ten listed benefits although the level of focus on a particular benefit varied from one competition to another. Student feedback showed that students found that competitions, especially competitions that were multidisciplinary in nature, enhanced their understanding of their engineering courses. Students also reported that participation in competitions helped them during job interviews.