Overview of Student Innovation Competitions and Their Roles in STEM Education

Abstract Student innovation competitions have long been an essential part of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education. Higher education institutions and foundations have expanded their co-curricular program offerings to recruit and support student innovators, such as design challenges, hackathons, start-up incubator competitions, boot camps, customer discovery labs, and accelerator programs. Therefore, student innovation competitions and challenges are increasingly playing a role in educating the next generation of innovators and critical thinkers. This paper focuses on student innovation competitions, which are usually non-credit, co-curricular, and team-based programs in which student teams aim to solve open-ended problems. The benefits and challenges of student innovation competitions for the participants in STEM education are summarized. Hence, the specific focus and details of the reviewed competitions are not in this paper's scope.

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