Learning essays and the reflective learner: supporting assessment in engineering design education

Assessment in experience-based engineering design education can be difficult. Learning essays are short compositions in which students make observations on their experiences, explore the implications of the observations, and articulate the lessons they are learning. The Reflective Learner is a Web-based environment created in order to support both learner and instructors, with the overhead and difficulties that can be associated with the learning essay task. Georgia Tech instructors of Mechanical Engineering design have been using learning essays for over 10 years to support goals of individual assessment of students and getting students to reflect on their learning. The author has been studying the unsupported activity for over a year and studying the activity as supported by the Reflective Learner for several months. In the process of studying the types of information present in the essays, it has become apparent that learning essays can support other classroom goals. In particular, information present in learning essays about students emerging understandings of design and learning from experience can support teachers in expanding their pedagogical domain knowledge and subsequently in making critical teaching decisions. In this paper, the author illustrates these themes using passages taken from learning essays written during the Fall, 1996 academic term.