This research will address the question of whether integration and reflection activities via developing a professional portfolio have an impact on students? lifelong learning competencies, their development of professional identity, and the ability to integrate their knowledge. It will advance the scholarship on undergraduate engineering student learning using a three-pronged quasi-experiment in portfolio development. The three experimental treatments are: (1) an academic year-long program in which students develop a comprehensive professional portfolio, (2) a quarter-long program in which students develop a focused professional portfolio, and (3) a competition that invites students to develop professional portfolios on their own and submit them for consideration for an award. These treatments require different levels of commitment from students who participate in them, as well as institutions that host them. In addition to investigating the impact of these three treatments, the resources associated with offering each treatment will be documented in order to better understand the scalability of each.
To effectively prepare for engineering in the 21st century, students must acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes relevant to engineering; the type of integrated understanding of these competencies that is a hallmark of expertise; and the life-long learning skills and professional engineering identity that enable students to apply their understandings in rapidly changing contexts and circumstances. Engineering education researchers are only beginning to understand how to effectively and feasibly support the development of life-long learning skills, professional engineering identities, and integrated knowledge. In order to accomplish these complex and interrelated goals, students need a variety of learning experiences. They also need opportunities to understand and articulate what they have learned from their educational experiences and how what they have learned relates to their futures as engineers?opportunities for both foundational and critical reflection. This project has the potential to transform undergraduate engineering education, not by changing the curriculum of existing programs, but by enabling engineering students to achieve the outcomes espoused by those programs and to develop into lifelong learners. If successful, the ideas proposed in this project will be scalable to fit the needs of almost any college of engineering.
