Self-Reflection on Professional Competences in the Master Program for Chemical Engineers

This paper presents an investigation into the quality of self-reflection during industrial internships by chemical engineering students at the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands. The quality of the self-reflection reports written at the end of a compulsory industrial internship is directly related to the amount of guidelines provided to the students. Furthermore the self-reflection improves if the students are stimulated to seriously consider their own performance and learning goals at various stages during the internship. Based on these findings a new procedure with extended guidelines employing specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) goals is introduced for the writing of self-reflection reports.