Using cooperative learning to enhance critical reflection

Over the past two decades, one of the key changes in Engineering curricula has been in the emphasis placed on the development of personal transferable skills. Employers also profess to seek these competencies when making recruiting decisions. Such skills include the ability to learn through collaboration and through meaningful critical reflection on one´s own performance, both as an individual and in a group setting. However, there is still much debate on the most effective mechanisms for acquiring such skills. Engineering students can be extremely resistant to the notion of individual or collective reflection and often find it difficult to function successfully in a group setting. This paper reports on how cooperative learning has been integrated into a large-scale, practical freshman Engineering laboratory module, and explores the student experiences of being encouraged to engage in meaningful reflection. In particular, it details the presentation modalities and phenomena that influence the engineering students attitudes toward cooperative learning and reflection.