2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This full paper examines what structured final reflection reveals about experiential learning in a community-oriented, project-based engineering course. Community-engaged design projects create opportunities for engineering students to integrate technical problem solving with social responsibility, but these benefits become more visible when students are guided to interpret and make meaning from their experiences. In this study, undergraduate students enrolled in an Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) course partnered with a local housing and services organization to develop a digital resource tool intended to help individuals experiencing homelessness locate food, shelter, and healthcare resources. Across the semester, students engaged in technical development, teamwork, partner interaction, and consideration of the broader social context in which their design would be used. To understand how students represented their learning from these experiences, we analyzed end-of-semester reflections from fifteen students using a deductive thematic analysis grounded in Kolb’s four learning stages. Findings show that Concrete Experience was expressed through hands-on design and programming work situated within authentic community needs. In the Reflective Observation stage, students described increased awareness of communication challenges, their own strengths and limitations, and the significance of their roles within collaborative engineering work. Through Abstract Conceptualization, students articulated broader insights about teamwork, accessible and community-responsive design, and the idea that engineering extends beyond technical performance alone. In Active Experimentation, students described future intentions such as improving communication, asking more critical design questions, and applying more inclusive and socially aware practices in later projects. Overall, the findings suggest that structured reflection served as an important mechanism for helping students interpret technical activity in relation to community context, responsibility, and future engineering practice. Rather than documenting developmental progression across time, the study shows what kinds of learning students foregrounded when asked to make sense of a sustained community-engaged engineering experience in writing. The results suggest that intentionally embedded reflective practices can help engineering educators cultivate technically grounded, socially aware, and adaptive problem-solvers prepared to navigate complex human-centered contexts.