2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Reflection, as a form of thinking, involves stepping out of a situation and creating knowledge. In an educational context, reflection plays a critical role in professional practice, learning from experience, and successful implementation of teaching methods such as active learning. In supporting student learning, educators can potentially improve and transform student learning through reflection activities. Reflection activities may be a significant tool in efforts to critically improve engineering education, address issues such as diversity and retention, and support learning goals such as innovation and global competencies. In engineering education, however, reflection and reflection activities are understudied and potentially underutilized.

This work, funded by the Engineering Education and Centered directorate, is motivated by a belief in the value of reflection for student learning in engineering, an appreciation of the range of activities that educators can leverage in order to support student reflection, and a sense of the need for resources to help educators make informed decisions in the design of reflection activities for specific situations. Against the backdrop of these ideas, our grant is operating on two levels.

On a foundational level, we are establishing empirically informed conceptual frameworks and associated survey instruments that help educators and resources understand (a) what knowledge gains result when students engage in specific reflection activities and (b) what types of reactions students have when they engage in the activity. This has included interviewing students to gain a deeper appreciation of their varied experiences with reflection, exploring student experiences through a focus on conversations with students about the design of “bad” reflection activities, and through iterative development and evaluation of possible survey formats.

On a practical level, we are exploring ways to distribute our conceptual frameworks alongside relevant information. Our efforts to create a toolkit has included the development and testing of printed forms (such as worksheets and workbooks) and digital forms (such as web-based resources). Recently, we have been exploring interactive forms such as puzzles and dice-based games in order to support the deep thinking that can go into designing reflection activities.

With our work, we aim to advance conversations about potential impact of reflection and conversations about how to leverage reflection in teaching. In the paper and poster, we will focus on both the foundational insights and practical resources that are emerging from this work.