The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly impacted people’s lives worldwide, with negative consequences for mental health and well-being. Antecedents of mental health and well-being in times of COVID-19 have been underresearched, especially among minority groups. Therefore, an online survey was conducted investigating the personal and societal antecedents of mental well-being among Chinese immigrants in the Netherlands (N = 268). Constructs included perceived decrease of mental well-being and attitude toward the Netherlands as dependent variables and a range of potential antecedents as independent variables. Results show that participants judged the Chinese COVID-19 situation significantly more positively than the Dutch situation. Five antecedents of decreased mental well-being were found: financial concerns, social isolation, feelings of lost time, experienced racism, and distrust of Dutch COVID-19 information and figures. The antecedents of participants’ attitude toward the Netherlands were largely different: missing China, perceived difficulty of traveling to China, distrust of Dutch government measures, trust in Chinese government measures, and distrust of Dutch COVID-19 information and figures. Fear of the virus itself did not significantly affect either of the dependent variables. The results call for a broad perspective on factors associated with mental well-being and for special attention for minority groups in the societal dynamics.

Challenge-based learning gains popularity in engineering education for allowing students to transcend academic and disciplinary boundaries and to fully engage in real-world problems, but it is largely underexplored how to improve specific designs of such educational practices to promote interdisciplinary learning experiences and competencies. This paper describes two studies that together in two steps make up an evidence-based redesign of a challenged-based course featuring group-work projects in an undergraduate program combining engineering with liberal arts and sciences. A first study based on observation and interviews collects different and varying learning experiences throughout students’ learning activities. The results showed that interdisciplinary experiences are constructed in complex dynamics between students’ disciplinary identity formation and the interdisciplinary and collaborative course configuration. Such dynamics may result in positive learning experiences (engagement and interdisciplinary enrichment) as well as negative ones (disengagement and frustration). Especially regarding the discrepancy between common experiences across the three phases of tackling the challenge (mapping, mitigating, integrating), representatives of parties important for the course were invited to a roundtable session in a second study to discuss and reflect on the first study’s findings and what they can mean for the course design. Understandings achieved in the session are used as input for upcoming course redesign towards a more desirably organized challenge-based learning. The two-step approach towards redesign is an example of involving researchers and students in evidence-based educational redesign, exemplifying the value of naturalistic research and educational co-creation in understanding and optimizing students’ learning experience to achieve fruitful challenge-based learning.