**4.2 Experiences of the course**

How do the students and mentors experience the programme integrating courses? Some results from the mandatory survey of PIC2 at the end of the academic year 2018/2019 are shown in **Table 5**. In each of these five questions, the students should answer on a Likert scale from 1 to 7 whether they agree or not to a statement. In the scale, 1 means *totally disagree* and 7 means *fully agree*. The same questions have been asked for a sequence of years, and the results are almost stable.

We can see that already from year 1, the students understand the aims of the seminars. They also, throughout the 3 years, appreciate listening to elder or younger students. The interviewed students confirmed this and even expressed that sharing an experience that could evoke change was the main benefit of the course.

The students value the programme integrating course more and more during the course of the course. At the end of the course, a majority of the students rank the fruitfulness of the course to 6 or 7 on the Likert scale. Increase of the knowledge of the education through PIC is also something that students rank higher in the third year than in the first year.

The student interviews showed that discussing the courses of the programme and how they link to each other was considered to be an important part of PIC, where the mentors were seen as gateways to change things. Some interviewed students considered some seminar topics to be nontechnical and far from what they chose to study and therefore not that valuable. The interviewed mentors confirmed that a few students' attitudes towards some topics were disappointing. Some mentors expressed that discussing these topics could be out of their own comfort zone. The proportion of students answering below 4 (i.e. were negative) to the fruitfulness of the 8 first seminars of the course varied between 8% (master programmes topic) and 28% (learning objectives, criteria and assessment topic).

Some of the interviewed students expressed that timing of the reflection assignments always was the worst possible—when all parallel courses had assignments due. One should note that the students get the assignment about 10 days before the deadline and that the assignment will take about 3 hours to complete.

Experienced mentors expressed that they were fortunate to be able to follow the development of their students throughout the 2 or 3 years of the course, to be able to learn their names, which is often not possible in the ordinary courses where the number of students is often over 200.


#### **Table 5.**

*Results from the survey 2019. The students were asked how well they agree with a set of statements on a Likert scale from 1 (I totally disagree) to 7 (I fully agree). The mean values of the answers are shown in the table.*

**211**

**Table 6.**

*Programme Integrating Courses Making Engineering Students Reflect*

Many more experiences of PIC are reported in [28, 29].

least one new study skill to try for the next months.

3.The students read each other's texts within the group.

The students often described a good relationship with the mentor, a relationship of trust. However, not all mentors seem to be engaged to the same extent in the course.

Hedin and Kann [30] have studied the effects of the programme integrating course PIC2 with respect to study skills. The course starts with a learning-to-learn

1.The students are instructed to look at least four of nine short videos, where Björn Liljeqvist, a young specialist in study skills, explains and motivates the use of a number of study skills. They are also instructed to read a short book on

2.The students write a reflective text about their own study habits and choose at

4.The students in the group meet and discuss the topic and their reflections in a

The evaluation shows, among other things, which effects the students believed the study skills had after trying them (see **Table 6**). No significant change was found in how satisfied the students were with their overall study technique immediately after the initial module, but in the long-term, 77% of the students believed the course had promoted their ability to analyse and adapt their study habits [30]. The proportion of students who believe that PIC has promoted this is largely the same in

5.About 6 weeks later, the students write a new text, reflecting on how the attempt to try a new study skill fell out, and discuss this at a new seminar.

We wanted the students to improve their ability to reflect more deeply. Therefore, we in 2012 developed and introduced a four-level model for reflections

Preparing before lectures? 23 69 8 Taking smart notes at lectures? 23 57 21 Going through the previous day's and week's teaching? 23 63 15 Planning my studies the upcoming week? 49 40 11 Maintaining a study diary? 23 45 32 Reading the course literature in three steps? 44 37 19 Trying to stop procrastinating? 59 31 10 Doing some other change? 43 57 0 In total (mean values) 35 51 14

**Obvious effect (%)** **Most likely effect (%)**

**No noticed effect (%)**

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.88253*

module, consisting of the following parts:

**4.3 Improving study skills**

how to study.

one-hour seminar.

different years and in different surveys.

**What is your perception of the effects on your** 

*Results from the postquestionnaire on the effects on the students' learning.*

**4.4 Progression of reflection**

**learning of**

The students often described a good relationship with the mentor, a relationship of trust. However, not all mentors seem to be engaged to the same extent in the course.

Many more experiences of PIC are reported in [28, 29].
