Student and Instructor Reflections on Integrating Short Mindfulness-Based Meditation Practices into a First-Year Engineering Design Course

Engineering students in the United States are experiencing substantial stress and threats to their well-being. Mindfulness-based meditation practice may help students to better manage these challenges as mindfulness-based interventions have been found to improve college students' well-being and critical competencies. However, only limited mindfulness-based research has been conducted with the engineering student population. This work integrated short mindfulness-based meditations into a first-year engineering design course to explore how these practices affect engineering students. To understand students' perceptions of these practices, written reflections were collected, and follow-up interviews were conducted. Generally, students perceived these in-class practices positively and described improved stress management, being more self-aware, and improvements in learning and coursework. The authors also share their insights on implementing these practices into their courses. We discuss challenges associated with engagement, the timing of the practices, and logistical issues. Overall, the results of this work encourage the integration of mindfulness-based practices into introductory engineering courses as students perceive many benefits. However, it is simultaneously necessary to recognize that implementing these practices can be challenging for instructors. Future research should investigate the effects of implementing these practices in other types of engineering courses like a first-year seminar course.