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 can be modest in terms of the amount of time required and thus can be added to existing instructional efforts to help magnify the impact of many types of educational activities and help individuals go beyond simply doing better. 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. Yet, within engineering education, reflection and reflection activities are understudied. The proposed work will establish and refine instruments that will help educators and scholars better understand student engagement in reflection activities, specifically their reactions to engaging in reflection activities and their self-reported knowledge gains. These instruments will be critical for helping engineering educators bring reflection activities into their teaching through informed choices and creating opportunities for deeper and more nuanced scholarship on reflection activities.
The intent of this study is to explore undergraduate engineering students' knowledge gains using a common approach so that reflection activities can be compared more readily. Another intent is to better understand student reactions to the reflection activities in a way that may serve many purposes such as interpreting study results and identifying ways to refine activities. A multi-week study with undergraduate engineering students culminating in interviews will capture students' perspectives when talking about reflection. These perspectives will be used to refine the conceptual models related to knowledge from and reactions to engaging in reflection activities. Usability studies of survey items and a principal component analysis will also be used to systematically develop and validate survey instruments. Finally, a study focusing on a selected reflection activity (e.g. exam wrappers) will be used for further survey validation. The proposed work features a systematic, rigorous process using best practices in survey instrument development, and in supporting educators in operationalizing learning goals through reflection activities. To this latter end, our proposed work includes both scholarly and practical dissemination.
