Reflective journals: An assessment of a vertically integrated design team project

Abstract

The use of affective/associative reflective journals and skill-based reflective journals as assessment tools of undergraduate chemical engineer students' learning in a vertically integrated team design project (VITDP) is the focus of this exploratory study. Participants from a large midwestern university were required to submit a reflective journal each week over a five-week period. The reflective journals of 23 participants were analyzed to unearth the conceptual descriptions of teamwork held by the participants, to describe the role of metacognition in reflective journal writing, and to determine how reflective journals facilitate construction of knowledge. Thus, reflective journals were meaningful as assessment tools because they communicated how VITDP participants learn and supplied valuable information to make future curricular and instructional decisions. Based on the reflective journals, teamwork is a social environment in which to learn engineering content and skills; however, the participants did not engage in metacognition. The authors suggest that future VITDP include structures to facilitate synergy and participants need instruction in reflection and metacognition as learning tools.