The Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) is an annual competition that provides high school students, grades 9-12, the opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a team environment. Each year, student teams will be asked to address a challenge that confronts leading industries. Students will utilize professional engineering software to develop their solutions and will also generate presentations that convincingly demonstrate the value of their solutions. The RWDC provides students with opportunities to apply the lessons of the classroom to the technical problems that are being faced in the workplace.
The RWDC began in 2008 through a partnership between industry, government, academia. The partners were committed to bringing a program to schools that brought professional engineering resources into the classroom and could scale to every school in the United States. In 2015 expanded internationally and began an international component to the competition. The RWDC now has students compete internationally.
Every teacher that participates in the RWDC gets $1 million in professional engineering software along with training, curriculum materials, and access to mentors. Teams of 3-7 high school students use these resources to solve an engineering challenge that is currently faced by industry.
Students first compete in a State/Provence level. The team with the best design is invited to Washington, DC to compete in the National/International finals.
Teams work to solve an engineering problem given by the RWDC. The problem is defined in the RWDC challenge materials giving details on the problem for the year as well as what design questions judges will be looking for teams to answer. The materials are listed under challenge materials. Teams will work on the problem and will detail their work in a document known as the engineering design notebook. The engineering design notebook will follow the format of an notebook template so that the team’s notebook follows the same organization that judges will use when the judges review the notebook using the scoring rubric. All these materials are provided for teams. The scoring rubric will show teams what judges will be looking for in each section of the notebook.
The challenge operates in 2 major parts during the year. The state/province level competition and the National/International part of the competition.
At the State/Provence level teams work from August through early January to complete their engineering design notebooks. They will work on the challenge to answer the questions in each section of the scoring rubric. The notebooks will follow the format of the Notebook Template document to line up with the scoring rubric.
Teams will submit the notebooks in January to be evaluated by judges. The top scoring teams will be invited to come to the National/ International competition. How teams qualify to move on varies from country to country. For example, in the United States the best teams from each state are invited to compete. In other countries the teams that are ranked highest in their country go. The number of qualifying slots vary from country to country.
The reason we call the next level the national/international competition is because this is where the final national ranking as well as the international ranking for the top teams.
For the National/ International competition we have teams work on the same engineering problem as the State/ Provence competition, but we add some additional variables to consider. Teams are given comments from judges on their state notebooks so they can revise and update their work to prepare for the National/International level. In addition to the notebooks teams will be asked to put together a 15 minute presentation on their design which they will present to a panel of judges. The National/ International competition runs from January through May 3. Teams will have to turn in their updated notebook and PowerPoint Presentation before the finals. The final competition will be held on May 3, 2025, in Washington, DC.
At nationals’ teams will be judged on their notebooks which will be worth 70% of their score and presentations with a question and answer section which will be worth 30% of their scores. Prior to the team’s arrival notebook scores will be evaluated to be combined with their presentation scores on the final day of competition. Each team will give a 15 minute presentation and will have a 10 minute question and answer session from a panel of judges.
Judges combined scores will determine the national ranking and other awards such as merit awards for teams. The judges will also determine the highest scoring national winning teams to move on to the international finals.
The top National winning teams will then compete in the International final round where they will give their presentation in front of a panel of blue ribbon judges. In the blue ribbon round teams will give their 15 minute presentation and will have 10 minutes of questions from the judges. The blue ribbon judges will then determine the international ranking of the finalists based solely on the presentation and the questions and answers. The students on the International Champion team all receive $50,000 scholarships to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.*
*This scholarship can only be awarded to each student once. If a student is on a champion team more than once they would only receive the 50,000 once.
We use cookies to analyze website traffic and optimize your website experience. By accepting our use of cookies, your data will be aggregated with all other user data.