This work assessed student reflective learning outcomes during a final Leadership/Mentorship course, after their participation in significant, experiential design projects in the University of Michigan's Multidisciplinary Design Program in the College of Engineering. Throughout the course, class discussions and assignments prompted students to reflect and examine their personal experiences in engineering design projects, their learning (both technical and professional), leadership, and team styles as well as understand group development and dynamics. A feature of the projects was the integration of students from diverse disciplines in engineering with other programs such as: Art, Architecture, Primary Sciences, Kinesiology, and Business. The diverse teams provided a rich environment but also created the complexity of multiple paradigms within the project teams. This course utilized the construct of Kolb's Experiential Learning Model and Kavanagh's reflection exercises to promote active reflection on students' team based engineering design project experiences. The in-class discussions and self-reflection based assignments not only helped students to more fully understand the technical aspects of engineering design, but also contributed to a greater understanding of working as a team and as competent, adaptive professionals. In a final reflection assignment, students described self-identified critical moments/milestones in their development (i.e., including design projects, classes, extracurricular activities, employment, etc.) and how the experience gained from those moments is important to their development as practicing professionals, effective mentors, and strong leaders. From these milestones, we identified common themes and experiences, including the impact on students' cognitive and professional identity development. Milestones were identified based on the forum for the experience such as classroom coursework, university-sponsored projects, extracurricular activities, student mentorship, and internship experiences. In addition, we examined each milestone to determine the types of skills/learning and professional competencies students identified as a result of each experience. The results offer a fascinating snapshot of how and where students recognize and value the development of these skills. We saw several themes emerge in the data. Although students identified a range of learning opportunities, the most common milestones originated from students' courses, extracurricular activities, mentorship opportunities, and team projects. From these milestones, we found a variety of professional skills and competencies identified as significant by the students: communication skills, navigating group dynamics, and planning/organization abilities are most prominent. Finally, we noticed differences in the proportions of milestones and skills when analyzing other factors such as: sex, grade point average, citizenship status, minority identity, and underrepresented minority status. The results are being utilized to strengthen how we teach engineering design and enhance engineering pedagogy for others.
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