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Board # 52:Engineering Drawing for the Next Generation: Students Gaining Additional Skills in the Same Timeframe

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Conference

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Columbus, Ohio

Publication Date

June 24, 2017

Start Date

June 24, 2017

End Date

June 28, 2017

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Tagged Topic

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--27874

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/27874

Download Count

814

Paper Authors

biography

Ethan Clark Hilton Georgia Institute of Technology Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-1623-228X

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Ethan is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology working with Dr. Julie Linsey as a part of the IDREEM Lab. He graduated with honors from Louisiana Tech University with his Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Ethan's research area is design cognition and methods with a focus on prototyping and its utilization during the design process. In particular, Ethan has focused on hand-drawn sketches and how they are used as tools for generating ideas and visual communication, especially when it involves the skill to generate quick and realistic sketches of an object or idea. He has also conducted research on how to effectively teach these skills to novice engineers.

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Myela A Paige Georgia Institute of Technology

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Myela Paige is a first-year graduate research assistant in the Engineering Design Research Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology. She is pursuing her Master of Science and PhD in Mechanical Engineering under the advisement of Dr. Katherine Fu. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2015. Myela is passionate about helping students from all walks of life receive the same opportunities. Her research interests include engineering education, education policy, and educational solutions for low-resource communities. Myela enjoys volunteering with local Atlanta-area schools to engage students in STEM and talking to them about college and the opportunities she has been given.

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Blake Williford Sketch Recognition Lab

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Blake is a PhD Student in Computer Science at Texas A&M University. He previously received a M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction and a B.S. in Industrial Design from Georgia Tech, and has worked professionally as an interdisciplinary designer in a range of design firms and tech corporations. His PhD research is in the domain of improving sketching ability and creativity via intelligent educational software.

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Wayne Li Georgia Institute of Technology

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Wayne K. Li is the James L. Oliver Professor, which is an endowed joint position between the Colleges of Design and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Through classes and the Innovation and Design Collaboration (IDC), he leads joint teaching initiatives and advances interdisciplinary collaboration between mechanical engineering and industrial design. He teaches students that design behavior bridges the language and ideological gap between engineering and design.

Previously, Li led innovation and market expansion for Pottery Barn seasonal home products, and was an influential teacher in Stanford University’s design program where he taught visual communication and digital media techniques. He also led ‘interface development’ in Volkwagen of America’s Electronics Research Laboratory, and developed corporate brand and vehicle differentiation strategies at Ford Motor Company.

Li received his Master of Science in Engineering (Product Design) from Stanford University, and undergraduate degrees in Fine Arts in Design and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

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Tracy Anne Hammond Texas A&M University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-7272-0507

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Director of the Sketch Recognition Lab and Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, Dr. Hammond is an international leader in sketch recognition, haptics, intelligent fabrics, SmartPhone development, and computer human interaction research. Dr. Hammond’s publications on the subjects are widely cited and have well over a thousand citations, with Dr. Hammond having an h-index of 19, an h10-index of 35, and four papers with over 100 citations each. Her research has been funded by NSF, DARPA, Google, and many others, totaling over 3.6 million dollars in peer reviewed funding. She holds a PhD in Computer Science and FTO (Finance Technology Option) from MIT, and four degrees from Columbia University: an M.S in Anthropology, an M.S. in Computer Science, a B.A. in Mathematics, and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics. Prior to joining the TAMU CSE faculty Dr. Hammond taught for five years at Columbia University and was a telecom analyst for four years at Goldman Sachs. Dr Hammond is the 2011-2012 recipient of the Charles H. Barclay, Jr. '45 Faculty Fellow Award. The Barclay Award is given to professors and associate professors who have been nominated for their overall contributions to the Engineering Program through classroom instruction, scholarly activities, and professional service.

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Julie S Linsey Georgia Institute of Technology

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Dr. Julie S. Linsey is an Assistant Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technological. Dr. Linsey received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas. Her research area is design cognition including systematic methods and tools for innovative design with a particular focus on concept generation and design-by-analogy. Her research seeks to understand designers’ cognitive processes with the goal of creating better tools and approaches to enhance engineering design. She has authored over 100 technical publications including twenty-three journal papers, five book chapters, and she holds two patents.

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Abstract

Research has often found that sketching during the design process is a vital tool for communication, idea-generation, and problem solving. Sketching has also been found to be beneficial in developing key skills such as spatial visualization. However, as CAD programs become more prevalent, research has shown that students do not use sketching as often, and fail to use it when it is needed such as for free-body diagrams and to quickly illustrate engineering design concepts. In contrast, sketching and visualization is a noted skill often employed by professional designers and engineers. In recent years, an introduction to engineering visualization course at [a university] 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. The modified curriculum for teaching sketching education involves instruction on techniques such as sketching in both isometric and perspective spaces, shading, and using proper lighting. Universities face many challenges in implementing this sketching pedagogy including the fact that engineering faculty are typically not familiar with sketching pedagogy and lack training in realistic, quick, perspective product sketch. Even when there are faculty with the appropriate skills, large enrollments severely limit the quality of feedback given to students. To remedy these issues and to provide further insights into AI tools that can interpret sketched-diagrams, an online sketching tutor was developed. This sketching tutor provides real-time feedback using sketch recognition software, allowing the student to continuously improve their technique with less instructor interaction.

This paper presents the impacts of the modified curriculum on students’ ability to sketch, self-efficacy in engineering design, and spatial visualization skills. The study compares three different approaches, (1) a traditional engineering sketching curriculum, (2) a perspective sketching curriculum, and (3) a perspective sketching curriculum with the sketch recognition software. Impact was measured using a pre- and post-course assessment of students using the Revised Purdue Spatial Visualization Tests- Rotation, a variation of the Vandenburg and Kuse Mental Rotation Test, and Design Self-Efficacy by Carberry, et al. Spatial visualization skills have been demonstrated to be critical for student retention in engineering and for many engineering tasks. The assessment also included a standardized sketching quiz. The pre-to-post comparisons of the three conditions showed equal improvements in the spatial visualization and design self-efficacy of the students. However, when only observing students who were initially low-scoring on the spatial visualization assessments, the improvements of students in the modified perspective sketching curriculum were significantly higher than students in the more traditional engineering drawing approach. As expected, the improvements in sketching ability of the students in the modified perspective curricula were higher than the improvements experienced by students in the traditional curriculum. These findings suggest that the modified perspective sketching curriculum maintains the critical spatial visualization skills, which are effectively taught with the traditional engineering curriculum, while also introducing an additional skill without requiring additional student time.

Hilton, E. C., & Paige, M. A., & Williford, B., & Li, W., & Hammond, T. A., & Linsey, J. S. (2017, June), Board # 52:Engineering Drawing for the Next Generation: Students Gaining Additional Skills in the Same Timeframe Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27874

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