WIP: The First-Year Engineer’s Learning Journey

In this Work-in-Progress paper, our goal is to share the tools, approaches, and analysis methods and how that might inform our understanding of the student's journey through their first engineering course. To gain insight into students' learning and emotions, we introduced a reflection assignment in the first-semester engineering course during Fall 2021. This reflection had students map their learning and emotions during the course. We adapted the quantitative approach of the Emotion Learning Model (ELM) and the qualitative approach of the Mental Model Matrix (MMM) to analyze these learning journey maps. From this analysis, we were able to identify the negative and positive effects and negative and positive learning that occurred in one of the units in our first semester engineering class.