2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

We increasingly find students arriving in our courses exhibiting unprofessional behavior, e.g., wearing earbuds throughout class sessions. It is unclear if students recognize the importance of professional behavior. It is also unclear if students recognize the value of deliberately working towards goals in their courses. To combat these trends, we sought to encourage students to think about their own behavior and learning by emphasizing academic and professional goal-setting and metacognition. Metacognition involves students thinking about their own thinking, or learning (Flavell, 1979). The integration of professional skills and metacognitive development in engineering education is a multifaceted approach aimed at enhancing student learning and preparedness. Previous studies have involved teaching metacognitive skills to help undergraduate engineering students take charge of their own learning (Cunningham et al., 2015) and the positive metacognitive changes in engineering students when self-appraisal and self-management exercises are used over the course of a design project (Lawanto, 2010.) In our required undergraduate (sophomores and juniors) environmental engineering course, we required students to set goals for the course at its outset. The goals related to their academic performance (e.g., earning an A, B, or C), content they wanted to learn (e.g., drinking water, biotechnology, or remediation), and professionalism (e.g., connections with instructional staff). We also required students to complete a survey that quantitatively and qualitatively assessed their perceptions about setting and attaining goals. Students reflected on their goals in writing both mid-way through the course and at its end, when they also re-took the survey. Additionally, students shared their goals and their progress with peers in small group discussions three times during the semester. The survey measured students’ attitudes about setting goals and meta-cognitive behaviors. Quantitative data were collected from 39 students using a survey at the beginning and end of the semester. We found significant growth on a number of survey items in alignment with the pedagogical goals of the course. Students' reflections demonstrated meaningful personal, academic, and professional goals. We fear that student professional behavior is declining. Our study results suggest that simply addressing professionalism, goal-setting, and metacognition may improve students’ perceptions of these critical areas. None of our work was unique to our field (Civil and Environmental Engineering); it is readily adaptable to all other engineering educators.