Developing Self-awareness in Learning Practices: Designing and Implementing a Survival Tool for Freshmen in Engineering

Abstract

Freshman engineering courses are considered to impact students’ perception of engineering and university education. In many aspects, the freshman engineering class needs to be one of the most transformative classes on students learning, self awareness, and professional identity. During their freshman year, many students attempt to draw connections between their aspirations and their educational path. While some students get engaged in the pursuit of best grades, many others find engineering courses to be packed with material, information, and tests with taxing “rigor” and an impediment towards pursuing their passion/dreams. This attitude calls for a necessary transformation in both the course delivery and student’s outlook towards learning. Thereafter, in the freshmen engineering courses at our institution we have designed our freshman course in Electrical Engineering to allow students to pursue their interests while becoming self-aware of their learning practices, have a smoother transition to university education and hopefully develop some professional identity as students. In this work, students’ reflections about learning and critical evaluation of systems will be evaluated. Variations in the texture of the students’ reflection over the course of the semester will be described.