GIFTS: Creative Reflection to Close the Semester

Benjamin Goldschneider

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Conference: 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Publication Date: June 22, 2025
Start Date: June 22, 2025
End Date: August 15, 2025
Conference Session: First-Year Programs Division (FPD) GIFTS Session 2: Foundational Skills in the First-Year Engineering Classroom
Tagged Division: First-Year Programs Division (FPD)
Tagged Topic: Diversity
Page Count: 6
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/56648

Paper Authors

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Benjamin Goldschneider University of Virginia

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Benjamin Goldschneider is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Foundations at the University of Virginia. He holds a PhD in Engineering Education from Virginia Tech, as well as a BS in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University. His research interests include students' sense of belonging, socialization, program development, and pre-college introductions to STEM material.

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Abstract

This GIFT describes a creative reflection assignment to be given at the end of engineering students’ first year. Motivation: Reflection is a powerful tool for students to evaluate their own learning and growth. It allows students to synthesize learning across lectures, assignments, and classes, as well as giving them a means to connect their past, present, and future selves with their experiences in a project or course. First Year Engineering (FYE) courses are a prime opportunity for students to engage in reflective assessments. Though they are still early in their academic careers, the first year is a pivotal period for making decisions around major selection, on-campus engagement, personal values, and more. As a result, intentionally incorporating reflection into assessments can help to support students as they make these choices that will influence the next four years and beyond. This assignment particularly emphasizes the connections between students’ personal hobbies and values and the engineering work they have completed. Furthermore, reflection provides an exceptional opportunity for faculty to connect with students. It offers faculty a chance to connect with students in a less restrictive, less academic context than simply providing feedback on an assignment, report, or project. Student-faculty connections are essential for student outcomes including both academic and personal satisfaction, as well as academic performance. Objectives: At the end of a semester, as final projects wrap up and final exams near, there is a final reflection assignment for FYE students to complete. The course does not have a final exam, so the reflection is a final sendoff for the semester. The purpose of this assignment is to give the students a chance to creatively reflect on the semester, and if given in the spring semester, perhaps the entire year. Students are given the chance to reflect in whatever medium they choose, from poetry to paintings, video reflections, or whatever else. It is open-ended to allow students a structured chance to do something that they enjoy at a point in the semester when free time is limited. They are not expected to reflect on any one element of the course, but their submissions must be related to the course in some clear way. Implementation: The creative expression reflection assignment is given one to two weeks before the final day of class and introduced during a lecture. The parameters are explained, as well as the grading, as its unorthodox requirements sometimes confuse students. It is made exceptionally clear to students that they are welcome to use whatever medium they choose, including straightforward written reflections if they are creatively drained or lack inspiration to do anything else. Grading is typically done after all other assignments are graded, and a comment is left on every student’s submission, with length depending on the faculty’s response to each submission. Assessment: The assignment itself is graded on completion. There are no points associated with what type of reflection students do or the quality of their submissions. If a submission is on time and connected to the content of the semester or year, it receives full credit. The most valuable part of assessing submissions is to leave comments for the students’ submissions, time permitting. Connecting with your students in this way as a sendoff can help validate their experiences, support your connection to them, and collect feedback on what the most important takeaways students had from the course. Admittedly, reviewing all of the submissions can be a time-intensive process, but is an enjoyable sendoff for the faculty as well.

Citation
Format

Goldschneider, B. (2025, June), GIFTS: Creative Reflection to Close the Semester Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . https://peer.asee.org/56648

TY - CPAPER
AB - This GIFT describes a creative reflection assignment to be given at the end of engineering students’ first year.
Motivation: Reflection is a powerful tool for students to evaluate their own learning and growth. It allows students to synthesize learning across lectures, assignments, and classes, as well as giving them a means to connect their past, present, and future selves with their experiences in a project or course. First Year Engineering (FYE) courses are a prime opportunity for students to engage in reflective assessments. Though they are still early in their academic careers, the first year is a pivotal period for making decisions around major selection, on-campus engagement, personal values, and more. As a result, intentionally incorporating reflection into assessments can help to support students as they make these choices that will influence the next four years and beyond. This assignment particularly emphasizes the connections between students’ personal hobbies and values and the engineering work they have completed. Furthermore, reflection provides an exceptional opportunity for faculty to connect with students. It offers faculty a chance to connect with students in a less restrictive, less academic context than simply providing feedback on an assignment, report, or project. Student-faculty connections are essential for student outcomes including both academic and personal satisfaction, as well as academic performance.
Objectives: At the end of a semester, as final projects wrap up and final exams near, there is a final reflection assignment for FYE students to complete. The course does not have a final exam, so the reflection is a final sendoff for the semester. The purpose of this assignment is to give the students a chance to creatively reflect on the semester, and if given in the spring semester, perhaps the entire year. Students are given the chance to reflect in whatever medium they choose, from poetry to paintings, video reflections, or whatever else. It is open-ended to allow students a structured chance to do something that they enjoy at a point in the semester when free time is limited. They are not expected to reflect on any one element of the course, but their submissions must be related to the course in some clear way.
Implementation: The creative expression reflection assignment is given one to two weeks before the final day of class and introduced during a lecture. The parameters are explained, as well as the grading, as its unorthodox requirements sometimes confuse students. It is made exceptionally clear to students that they are welcome to use whatever medium they choose, including straightforward written reflections if they are creatively drained or lack inspiration to do anything else. Grading is typically done after all other assignments are graded, and a comment is left on every student’s submission, with length depending on the faculty’s response to each submission.
Assessment: The assignment itself is graded on completion. There are no points associated with what type of reflection students do or the quality of their submissions. If a submission is on time and connected to the content of the semester or year, it receives full credit. The most valuable part of assessing submissions is to leave comments for the students’ submissions, time permitting. Connecting with your students in this way as a sendoff can help validate their experiences, support your connection to them, and collect feedback on what the most important takeaways students had from the course. Admittedly, reviewing all of the submissions can be a time-intensive process, but is an enjoyable sendoff for the faculty as well.

AU - Benjamin Goldschneider
CY - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DA - 2025/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - GIFTS: Creative Reflection to Close the Semester
UR - https://peer.asee.org/56648
ER -