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In a core mechanical engineering course on numerical methods at the University of South Florida in the fall of 2022, students were presented with discussion questions to serve as metacognitive activities. The course consisted of eight topics, and after each topic, the students were asked a single discussion question. While answering these questions was optional for the students, it served as 2% extra credit for the eight questions of the course. This initiative was initially taken to offset any occasional missed 30 online homework assignments, which accounted for 15% of the grade for the semester. These questions were designed to elicit thoughtful and unique responses from the students. To promote learning from others, students were allowed to see posted responses from other students only after they had submitted theirs. The questions ranged from making a meme to describing a difficult or intuitive concept. Despite the opportunity for extra credit and the unique prompts, the participation rate was only 59% of the possible submissions, and no clear trend was observed between the participation of high- or low-performing students.