From Learning to CAD to CADing to Learn: Teaching the Command, Strategic, and Epistemic Dimensions of CAD Software

摘要

Computer Aided Design (CAD) instruction, required for most engineering students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, takes a command-centered approach, demanding that students successfully replicate sample engineering models, assemblies, and associated drafts. This educational approach is effective in helping students gain sufficient declarative and procedural knowledge—that is, knowledge about the relationships between user inputs and corresponding software responses in order to replicate pre-specified component parts and assemblies. Drawing on Ivan Chester's framework of CAD knowledge domains, this method succeeds with declarative and procedural knowledge but falls short in teaching strategic knowledge required to effectively employ CAD as a design tool.