We have undertaken an action research project to enable 2nd year Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EBEE) students with the type of skills and practices they would need to obtain maximum benefit from the Problem Based Learning (PBL) experience. Reflection is a difficult process and students need to be trained to reflect purposefully. Students also often bring negative preconceptions about the particular academic discipline. It is important to spend time at the start of a course to ask students to describe and evaluate their perceptions of the course. This kind of dialogue can promote what we call reflection-for-learning, and also gave us the baseline for our action research project. The second stage of our project was to deliver workshops and other training sessions to the students. The third stage was to then re-assess the students' knowledge and application of reflective practices.