Pam Mort

This paper examines the use of reflective writing as a learning activity within a new 4th year project-based mechanical engineering design course. The learning activity was a continuation of the use of critical reflection as a pedagogical model first introduced in a Faculty-wide common first year engineering design course.
In the new course, the pedagogy was centred on the “student as engineering design consultant”, utilising authentic learning experiences obtained through collaboration with industry who contributed a variety of commercial design problems for student design teams to work on. The course aims were to achieve a more balanced set of outcomes, integrating knowledge and skills from both technical and professional competencies. The learning activity was introduced in the 4th year course to leverage both the motivation of the student cohort as they contemplated graduation into the workforce, and the affective impact presented by engaging with industry.
Four written reflective tasks of 1.5 – 2 pages were assigned, aimed at addressing the Engineers Australia’s Professional Engineering Stage 1 Competencies for independent learning, complex problem solving and demonstrating effective communication skills. The goal of the reflective writing tasks was to promote design thinking as a means of self-directed problem solving for professional practice. The topics for each task were also intended to prepare students for a career as a professional engineer and were assigned over the course of the semester.
From an analysis of the students’ written responses it can be seen the extent to which reflection enhances the depth of the learning process and provides opportunities for students to move from the role of the learner to that of graduate engineering practitioner.

This paper examines the use of reflective writing as a learning activity intended to enhance the development of students’ lifelong learning skills and the formation of their identities as professional engineers within a new industry focused capstone mechanical engineering design course. Within the literature, educating engineering students to successfully grapple with the complexity of socio-technical problems as well as problems that do not yet exist is a critical challenge for engineering academics and requires  a better understanding of the discipline specific qualities required to engage in lifelong learning. Using a range of linguistic analysis approaches, including thematic analysis, concordance analysis and Systemic Functional Grammar, evaluation of students’ written responses demonstrated the extent to which reflection enhances the depth of the learning process and provides insight into how students move from the role of the learner to that of graduate engineering practitioner. The results suggest a distinct difference between top and bottom performers in the course in the degree of self-efficacy as reflected in their level of agency, degree of comfort with owning their own learning and transitioning from a student to a professional identity. With further development and extended implementation throughout the curriculum, reflective writing has significant implications for the design of curriculum required for the future to develop student habits of lifelong learning.