Engineering judgment revealed in student reflections: the prominence of metacognition during project work

A consensus-driven definition for engineering judgment has been absent from the engineering education literature. Therefore, a Delphi study was previously conducted to develop one. The present study used this emergent definition to describe the practice of engineering judgment by undergraduates as revealed in reflections about project work in two courses. To provide a comparison, interviews were also conducted with a subset of students. Using the definition as a coding scheme, deductive con tent analyses of the reflections and interviews revealed that metacognition was the element of engineering judgment practiced most frequently during project work, followed by test, critique, or identify errors. This suggests undergraduates may readily brin g metacognition and testing to the practice of engineering judgment. A secondary content analysis revealed planning and monito ring were the aspects of metacognition most frequently practiced. This study offers an indirect assessment of the practice of en gineering judgment using a consensus definition, reflections, and interviews.