Tinkercad—Not Just for Kids

Branimir Pejcinovic; Melinda Holtzman

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: June 26, 2024
Conference Session: Integrating Hands-On Technology and Project-Based Learning in Engineering Education
Tagged Division: Electrical and Computer Engineering Division (ECE)
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--48157
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48157
Download Count: 38

Paper Authors

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Branimir Pejcinovic Portland State University orcid.org/0000-0001-8574-5455

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Branimir Pejcinovic received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is a Professor and former Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education at Portland State University, Electrical and Computer Engineering department. He has led department-wide changes in curriculum with emphasis on project- and lab-based instruction and learning. He was awarded the best paper award by the ECE division of ASEE in 2017 for his work on freshman engineering course development. His research interests are in the areas of engineering education, microwave absorber design, ferroelectrics, photovoltaics, THz sensors, signal integrity, and semiconductor device characterization, design, and simulation. He is a member of IEEE and ASEE.

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Melinda Holtzman Portland State University

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Melinda Holtzman received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nevada, Reno. She is a Teaching Assistant Professor and undergraduate advisor in the ECE department at PSU.

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Abstract

Covid-19 caused a great deal of disruption across all levels of education largely by forcing teachers and students to quickly adapt to some model of online delivery and learning. This has been especially difficult for engineering faculty and students due to the high reliance on hands-on experimentation in labs and other modes of face-to-face learning such as projects. In our case, this has meant lectures delivered over Zoom and labs done by students by themselves at home. For example, many of our electronics courses used Analog Discovery from Digilent and more advanced courses used nanoVNA-s.

In addition to this switch to “personal” instrumentation we were forced to rely on simulation much more than before Covid. This is due to many reasons, such as simplicity of use, wide availability, and use across multiple courses. Introducing simulation tools like LTSpice from Analog Devices or Multisim from National Instruments is almost standard practice in ECE programs. However, this introduction usually happens at the earliest on the Sophomore level during the fundamentals of circuit analysis courses.

Introducing such powerful but also complex tools at the freshman level, especially for the first engineering course is problematic. The complexity of the interface and conceptual difficulty of interpreting schematics and different types of simulations can be intimidating and demotivating for students just testing the waters in the electrical or computer engineering field.

Recently, the well-known 3-D design tool Tinkercad from Autodesk was expanded to include simulation of electrical and electronic circuits. The software is web-based and has a fairly intuitive interface that was meant to be friendly even for middle and high school students. Over time, its simulation capabilities have expanded and now cover areas that go well into the requirements of sophomore-level circuits courses. In addition. Tinkercad now has a built-in interface to Arduino and BBC micro:bit microcontrollers which enables programming either in their native language (C-like for Arduino) or a special graphical user interface. This now opens up opportunities for exploring not just analog and digital circuits but also microcontroller projects.

We have used Tinkercad in two different first-year introductory courses delivered at: 1) a large regional university in the US, and 2) a large university in China. In the US, we have used it in both online and in-person courses. In China, we have used it in online courses during two years of COVID-19, and we are now transitioning to face-to-face instruction. We will provide a more detailed institutional context in the full paper and will describe how Tinkercad is used and for what purposes at both institutions.

So far, the software has been relatively easy to implement either as pre-lab assignments or as stand-alone assignments or projects. One very useful feature is building circuits with a virtual breadboard that very closely mimics the actual lab experiments. Students seem to like the software, but we will have to evaluate this more carefully once we are in steady-state face-to-face mode at both institutions.

Citation
Format

Pejcinovic, B., & Holtzman, M. (2024, June), Tinkercad—Not Just for Kids Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--48157

TY - CPAPER
AB - Covid-19 caused a great deal of disruption across all levels of education largely by forcing teachers and students to quickly adapt to some model of online delivery and learning. This has been especially difficult for engineering faculty and students due to the high reliance on hands-on experimentation in labs and other modes of face-to-face learning such as projects. In our case, this has meant lectures delivered over Zoom and labs done by students by themselves at home. For example, many of our electronics courses used Analog Discovery from Digilent and more advanced courses used nanoVNA-s.

In addition to this switch to “personal” instrumentation we were forced to rely on simulation much more than before Covid. This is due to many reasons, such as simplicity of use, wide availability, and use across multiple courses. Introducing simulation tools like LTSpice from Analog Devices or Multisim from National Instruments is almost standard practice in ECE programs. However, this introduction usually happens at the earliest on the Sophomore level during the fundamentals of circuit analysis courses.

Introducing such powerful but also complex tools at the freshman level, especially for the first engineering course is problematic. The complexity of the interface and conceptual difficulty of interpreting schematics and different types of simulations can be intimidating and demotivating for students just testing the waters in the electrical or computer engineering field.

Recently, the well-known 3-D design tool Tinkercad from Autodesk was expanded to include simulation of electrical and electronic circuits. The software is web-based and has a fairly intuitive interface that was meant to be friendly even for middle and high school students. Over time, its simulation capabilities have expanded and now cover areas that go well into the requirements of sophomore-level circuits courses. In addition. Tinkercad now has a built-in interface to Arduino and BBC micro:bit microcontrollers which enables programming either in their native language (C-like for Arduino) or a special graphical user interface. This now opens up opportunities for exploring not just analog and digital circuits but also microcontroller projects.

We have used Tinkercad in two different first-year introductory courses delivered at: 1) a large regional university in the US, and 2) a large university in China. In the US, we have used it in both online and in-person courses. In China, we have used it in online courses during two years of COVID-19, and we are now transitioning to face-to-face instruction. We will provide a more detailed institutional context in the full paper and will describe how Tinkercad is used and for what purposes at both institutions.

So far, the software has been relatively easy to implement either as pre-lab assignments or as stand-alone assignments or projects. One very useful feature is building circuits with a virtual breadboard that very closely mimics the actual lab experiments. Students seem to like the software, but we will have to evaluate this more carefully once we are in steady-state face-to-face mode at both institutions.

AU - Branimir Pejcinovic
AU - Melinda Holtzman
CY - Portland, Oregon
DA - 2024/06/23
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Tinkercad—Not Just for Kids
UR - https://peer.asee.org/48157
DO - 10.18260/1-2--48157
ER -