Assessing first-year students' ability to critically reflect and build on their team experiences

Abstract

Undergraduate engineering students are more likely than ever to find themselves working on project-based team assignments. This pedagogical shift toward project-based team learning environments has raised a number of questions for faculty including questions about what first-year students are learning about themselves and their teammates while they are participating in project-based team assignments. In this study, first-year undergraduate engineering students watched a video of themselves during a design team meeting for a project-based course. They were then asked to analyze the video using one of five prompts and to provide evidence-based suggestions and feedback for themselves and their team. Using a coding framework delineated from Mezirow's theory of transformative learning, ordinal levels of self-reflection were assigned to each self-reflection essay: non-reflection (lowest level of reflection), understanding, reflection, and critical reflection (highest level of reflection). After evaluating the essays, 6% (3) of the self-reflection essays were assessed as non-reflection, 29% (15) were labeled as understanding, 58% (30) earned an evaluation of reflective, and 8% (4) were classified as critically reflective. The five self-reflection prompts provided no statistically significant difference between the levels of reflection received (chi-squared = 1.99, df = 4, p-value = 0.74). Women may show a trend of achieving higher levels of reflection than men (W = 258.5, p-value = 0.10). Viability of assessing levels of reflection is discussed. Suggestions for future self-reflection prompts are provided. Qualitative characteristics of critical reflectors are given.