Attrition and low motivation are two challenges that have been identified in the middle years of the engineering curriculum, especially second year courses, as students are beginning to engage in fundamental engineering courses. These courses go beyond the basic sciences and introduction to engineering principles of the first year and students often find them difficult. In this workshop, we will be sharing our approach within a second-year transport phenomena course, covering fundamentals in Thermodynamics, Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, and that addresses the above challenges by engaging students through a module that involved metacognitive practices to promote students’ learning and persistence in the course. Through reflection and visualization, students were better able to make connections between both technical and character related aspects of their learning while encouraging creativity and learning from other’s experiences. Significantly, visual methods also served as a tool for assessing student gains over the semester. This proposal contributes to strategies for encouraging students to make connections between various technical engineering concepts and skills alongside holistic aspects of practicing engineering. It will also help faculty generate creative ideas for encouraging student persistence in learning technical concepts and assess students’ development of non-technical competencies.