Engineering an Identity CASTL Project

Student self-assessment – reflection

Formative evaluation of Fall 2005 reflection reports

Methodology:

• Crafted reflection questions to attempt to elicit student perceptions of important skills and attributes of an engineer, and to get an idea of how the team might impact individual perceptions and actions.
• Read through all individual responses after I had grouped them together wrt teams, and recorded common responses, looking for overall patterns among the students and specific patterns within teams.
• I had some idea of what I was looking for, but no formal rubric to assess each student’s “progress” towards achieving the type of engineering identity that is a goal of the ME curriculum.
• On the assignment the students were given the following "Overall Assessment Notes": "You are not being evaluated on your achievement of outcomes or on how positively you evaluate your design. You are being evaluated on whether or not you make an honest effort to reflect on the SrD experience to date, to make suggestions for improving it and to identify lessons that you have learned that extend beyond this project."

Student Comments:

Characteristics of a good engineer:

Teamwork

Communication

Patience

Justify decisions

Listen and be open to other ideas

Adaptability / ability to evolve

Customer-focused

Influential (salesman)

Documentation

Always willing to learn new things

Time management

Help solve societal problems like energy

Has experience

Safety

Researches a topic fully

Appreciates that diversity leads to better teams and decisions

General good person and honest

“Engineering is not only a profession but a way of life”.

Only one student made reference to codes, standards and regulations.

Little discussion on team level of what it means to be a good engineer – only what happens in the context of making engineering decisions.

My thoughts after reading all reflection reports:

Team identity is not fully developed at this point in the process

Teamwork and communication seem to dominate students’ thoughts, likely because they are a dominant feature of the course experience. How can we increase the profile of the other professional skills?

The overall (and somewhat overwhelming) feeling I get from the reflection reports is the impact of culture on the students.

• Want things NOW, little appreciation for thoroughly thinking and considering before acting or deciding
• May need some sort of transformative process (for example a focused discussion on the design and team experience through tollgate 1) to get students to acknowledge these cultural tendencies and re-evaluate them in light of their profession.

Items for improvement:

• Need to clarify for students the concept of “team identity” and what it means to be “professional”
• I need to somehow involve the students in an authentic way in the process of determining how best to explain and measure achievement of the professional skills outcomes.
• How can this be structured?
• Need to verify that students are not just writing in their reflections what they think I want to hear.
• Assign one student to count hands, pose the question: “Were your responses on the reflection report influenced by what you thought I wanted you to say?”, and leave the room for the vote. After returning, get the count and discuss the issue with students, including its link to integrity and professionalism.
• Use “Necessary but not sufficient” concept from Mathematics to communicate the idea that technical skills and knowledge are important but not sufficient to be a “good engineer”. Use sports analogies to further develop the idea.
• Consider including more activities related to an engineer’s (or just an informed citizen’s) responsibilities wrt regulations.
• Use the "1^st do no harm" idea from medicine to highlight the "Hold paramount the safety" code of ethics for engineers.