Engineering Drawing for the Next Generation: Students Gaining Additional Skills in the Same Timeframe

摘要

Research has often found that engineering drawing is a vital tool for communication, idea-generation, problem solving, and developing key skills such as spatial visualization. However, many curricula have replaced the bulk of instruction in hand sketching with Computer-Aided Design programs despite these known benefits of drawing. In recent years, an introduction to engineering visualization course at Georgia Institute of Technology has modified the portion of the class dedicated to hand-sketching using pedagogy commonly used in industrial design courses to develop students' sketching ability and visualization skills. This modified curriculum involves instruction on techniques such as sketching in both isometric and perspective spaces, shading, and ray-tracing. This paper observes the impacts of a modified curriculum in and engineering graphics course on students' ability to sketch, self-efficacy in engineering design, and spatial visualization skills. Impact was measured using pre- and post-course assessments and surveys. The pre-to-post comparisons of the groups of students taught using different methods showed equal improvements in the spatial visualization of the students. The improvements in sketching ability of the students in the modified perspective curricula were found to be significantly higher than the improvements experienced by students in the traditional curriculum. These findings suggest that the modified perspective sketching curriculum maintains critical spatial visualization skills, which are effectively taught with the traditional engineering curriculum, while also introducing an additional skill without requiring additional student time. These findings justify the need to continue improvement of the perspective-based curricula and to continue development of tools to aid in the instruction of these new skills.