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Redesign of a Course in Engineering Design Graphics

James M. Leake

Department of General Engineering

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

This paper describes the redesign of a first year engineering graphics course at the

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Starting with a solid foundationalcourse in engineering graphics, the redesign effort draws upon the expertise of UIUCs

Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education in order to develop a modern learner-

centered graphics course. The resulting class employs a variety of educationaltechnologies, including web-based course management software, video capture

technology, on-line testing and surveys, downloadable lecture notes, etc. The new course

also features such modern pedagogical approaches as outcome-based instructional

objectives, active and collaborative learning techniques, and peer assessment. Throughthe use of web technology, a strong effort is made to accommodate different student

learning styles.

The redesigned course strives to develop the 3D literacy of students by focusing on

modeling, visualization, and sketching, as well as traditional engineering graphics

material. Students use both non-parametric and parametric solid modeling software inthe modeling lab. A separate sketching lab helps students to collaboratively develop their

freehand sketching and visualization skills. A team design project allows students to

develop teamwork and communication, as well as advanced modeling and sketchingskills, while working on an open-ended design project.

Introduction

In the fall semester of 2000 a redesigned first year engineering graphics course wastaught for the first time at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). This

paper starts with some background leading up to the decision to revise the course. The

influence of a College of Engineering teaching organization on the redesign is thencovered, as well as the philosophy, goals and objectives driving the redesign. The results

of the redesign effort are then described, including descriptions of the principal

components of the redesign effort. The paper concludes with a discussion of somepreliminary feedback on the redesign, along with a description of future work.

BackgroundThe Department of General Engineering UIUC has long been associated with

engineering graphics. At one time the Department required several engineering graphics

courses for graduation. To this day the Department offers a service course in engineeringgraphics for students in other UIUC College of Engineering (COE) departments. As has

happened elsewhere however, the emphasis on graphics has diminished over the years to

the point that the Department now requires a single course in engineering graphics. Ofthe twelve engineering departments at UIUC, only seven of them (Aeronautical,

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Agricultural, Civil, General, Materials Science, Mechanical and Industrial, Physics) still

require a course in engineering graphics for graduation.

In the Department of General Engineering - UIUC this course is called Engineering

Graphics and Design, GE103. Like similar courses at other universities, GE103 had been

modernized in the 1990s to include the arrival of CAD technology. GE103 has long hada reputation as being a demanding course, one requiring considerable effort on the part of

students in order to do well. In fact in some cases students would spend long hours on the

course only to receive an average grade for their efforts. The fact that GE103 is a servicecourse put considerable strain on the Department. In the 1997-1998 academic year, for

example, 740 students were enrolled in GE103. In order to handle the teaching load,

professors from GE, many with no real background or interest in the subject matter, were

drafted to help teach the course.

Like many other large research universities, UIUC has traditionally employed the UNIX

platform for its computer needs. Throughout the 1990s the Department maintained a

UNIX computer laboratory for the exclusive use of GE103. On the other hand,Autodesks AutoCAD was used for software. In the mid-1990s considerable effort was

made by the Department to develop a series of structured exercises illustrating variousconcepts in engineering graphics and descriptive geometry, all using AutoCAD. At the

same time new UNIX workstations were purchased by the College of Engineering for the

GE103 lab. When Autodesk discontinued its support of the UNIX platform with Release

14, the Department was faced with a significant software-hardware incompatibilityproblem.

As the years passed the software grew increasingly out of date. By the spring of 1999GE103 was using software dating from the beginning of the decade. Increasingly,

students came to the course with experience using a more recent version of the software

than was used in GE103. Supporting the course had become a significant burden to thedepartment, both in terms of staffing and financially. Attempts had been made by the

department to hire new faculty with an interest in maintaining the course, but for

whatever reason, none lasted long. Students were unhappy with the demanding workload,as well as with the fact that the content was growing increasingly out of date.

Overburdened professors were frustrated with having to teach a course they had little

interest in. Teaching assistants disliked the course because of the tremendous amount of

grading required. Other departments grew frustrated fielding complaints from theirstudents who were required to take the course. In 1999 the Department of Mechanical

and Industrial Engineering, GE103s largest customer, made the decision to develop their

own CAD course.

With the withdrawal of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, approximately 450

students are now required to take GE103 each year. The enrollment breakdown bydepartment includes General Engineering (26%), Civil Engineering (21%), and

Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering (14%). The other engineering departments

requiring GE103 make up approximately 10% of the enrollment, with the remainder of

students coming from other colleges.

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Prior to 2000 the GE103 subject matter included 3D wireframe modeling, projection

theory, multiview projections, and descriptive geometry. There were six contact hours perweek: two hours of lecture, two hours of instrument drawing, and two hours of CAD.

There were three written exams, quizzes, a small design project, and more than eighty

assignments. Only about a third of these assignments were done outside of class.

Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education

Starting in the fall of 1999 the Department of General Engineering created a position with

the title Director of Engineering Graphics and hired this papers author to fill that

position. At the same time the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education (AE3),

a UIUC College of Engineering program, was awarded a grant to improve the quality oflower level engineering courses. The grant is funded by General Electric and is entitled

Architecture for Change: A Systemic Initiative to Improve Student Learning (ARC). The

ARC project aims to improve both student and teacher satisfaction with large lowerdivision engineering courses by incorporating outcome-based learning objectives, active

and collaborative learning approaches, peer and reflective assessments, and by adoptingan anytime, anywhere approach to content delivery. Each academic year two COEcourses are selected to participate in the ARC project. GE103 was one of these courses in

the 1999-2000 academic year.

As well as providing GE103 with funding to be used toward the redesign of the course,AE3 has also provided the GE103 redesign effort with considerable expertise in such

areas as the training of teaching assistants, the use of collaborative learning techniques,

the use of technology both in and outside the classroom, etc. The AE3 staff has providedclassroom observations and feedback for lecturers and teaching assistants, gathered

baseline data on student perceptions of the course by conducting surveys and organizing

student focus groups, participating in weekly course redesign meetings, etc.

In addition to managing ARC, AE3 has a number of other functions within the COE, all

aiming to improve the quality of teaching within the college. Examples include theTeaching College, where COE faculty members attend weekly seminars/workshops over

the course of an academic year. These seminars provide participating professors with an

arsenal of techniques, tips and knowledge relevant to modern education. During the

1999-2000 academic year the author was a Teaching College participant, along withabout fifteen other COE professors.

AE3 also sponsors an annual series of workshops given by the renowned engineering

educator, Richard Felder. In October of 1999 Dr. Felder gave a workshop on courseredesign at UIUC (Felder, 1999), which the author attended.

As a consequence of AE3s participation, the revised GE103 course redesigned now

employs several modern teaching techniques. These include the use of active and

collaborative learning, the development of testable learning objectives, the use mid-

semester student surveys to gage student perceptions of the course, the employment ofpeer evaluation for assessing design team efforts, etc.

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Redesign Philosophy, Goals and Objectives

The GE103 redesign effort begins with the view that a first year graphics course, given

the tremendous advances in modeling and visualization technology in recent years, canserve to showcase the engineering discipline to students new to the field. A first graphics

course for engineers ought to be fun and exciting. The technology certainly is. Such a

course should generate enthusiasm for engineering, not the reverse. It has the potential toretain students, even to entice them to become engineers.

At the same time this course always has been and should continue to be rigorous,challenging, and demanding. This is something of a tradition within the Department,

serving to convey to incoming students such engineering hallmarks as the importance of

organization, self-discipline, diligence and neatness.

At the outset of the redesign effort certain goals and objectives were fairly clear. The

Department, for example, made it clear that solid modeling should be a key component of

the revised curriculum. Taking this a step further, it is felt that by emphasizing the central

role of the 3D CAD database, a first year graphics course has the potential to integrate,and even to redefine, the undergraduate engineering curriculum.

The redesigned course aims to develop the 3D literacy of students by focusing on

modeling, visualization, and sketching. Research suggests that hand sketching is more

effective than computer modeling in developing spatial visualization skills (Sorby 1999).To this end, a sketching component would play a prominent role in the redesigned course.

Another issue was the standardization both of instructional content and of assessment

across the course. Since GE103 is a service course with considerable lab content,teaching assistants are relied on both to expand upon course content and to evaluate

student efforts. The course was unpopular with graduate teaching assistants because ofthe level of effort required on their part both for in-class preparation and for grading. Animportant outcome of the redesign effort should then be the development of materials that

streamline the teaching assistant course workload. In addition, because many different

faculty members had been called on to teach GE103, a great deal of past effort had goneinto the development of individual lecture note sets. Consequently another redesign goal

was to produce lecture slides that different course instructors could modify to suit their

own teaching style, without having to start from scratch.

In keeping with modern trends in education, as well as with ARCs anytime, anywhere

philosophy, it was also felt that the new course should be centered on the student

learners. This goal could be met by introducing collaborative learning techniques and byemploying web-based technology.

Students come to a first year course in graphics with a broad range of graphicsbackgrounds and visualization skills. Some students have already taken several semesters

of graphics in high school. High school graphics instruction runs the gamut from drawing

with instruments through the use of CAD and in the extreme, parametric solid modeling.While the majority of engineering students at UIUC have not had graphics instruction in

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high school, visualization skills and computer literacy vary markedly from one student to

the next. Developing methods to accommodate this variance in skill level and

background preparation is another goal of the GE103 course redesign effort.

Course Components

After a full year in development, from August 1999 until August 2000, the redesignedGE103 was taught for the first time in the Fall 2000 semester. The course consists of two

hourly lectures each week, as well as two lab sessions. Lectures are handled by aninstructor, and have a maximum capacity of 106 students. A modeling lab meets once a

week for two hours and is the responsibility of a teaching assistant. There are 36 students

in each modeling section. A sketching lab, also the responsibility of a teaching assistant,

meets once a week for an hour. There are 18 students in the sketching lab sections.

Content and Assessment

In order to accommodate the addition of solid modeling material, it was necessary toremove descriptive geometry from the GE103 curriculum. This was certainly the most

significant content change. Another important change was to eliminate drawing withinstruments, replacing it with freehand sketching. Regarding assessment, a team designproject worth 20% of the final course grade has replaced the final written exam. Two

modeling exams have also been added, and the number of assignments has been

significantly reduced.

Lectures

Lectures are given in a large lecture hall. A high-resolution projection system with a large

screen has recently been installed in the lecture room. The system includes both a PCrunning Windows 2000 and a Macintosh computer. Video projection is also available, as

is a camera that can be used to project text and objects (e.g., engineering scales, rapid

prototyping models) on the projection screen for audience viewing. The computer CDdrive is used to play audio

CDs prior to and after the

lecture. In addition there is asmaller screen with an

overhead projector available,

as well as traditional

blackboards.

Presentation software slides

have been created and are

available on the course website for downloading.

Students are encouraged tobring the notes with them to

the lectures. There are

currently twenty-five

lectures, with approximately300 slides in all (Figure 1).

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Figure 1 Lecture Slide Example


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Every effort is made to vary the pacing in the lecture. Ideally, no single activity lasts

more than fifteen minutes. The more successful lectures appear to be those that employthe most activities. A given lecture session might include any of the following: making

various announcements in conjunction with the course website, answering questions,

briefly discussing the lecture slides (omitting less important slide content in the interestof time), demonstrating the use of CAD software to describe a partial solution to some

modeling problem, describing some aspect of the design project, using the blackboard to

demonstrate a sketching technique, having students collectively sketch a solution to aproblem provided on the overhead, asking students to collectively summarize previously

covered material, etc.

In an effort to get around the need to provide CAD software instruction during thelectures, a series of video tutorials were developed. The video tutorials are discussed later

in the paper. A previous practice of using unannounced lecture quizzes has been

discontinued. In their place, on-line quizzes are announced during the lecture. Students

take the quiz that day but on their own time. The on-line lecture notes and quizzes,coupled with the video tutorials, allows for the opportunity to use active and collaborative

learning in the lecture, as well as to spend time on more advanced graphics topics (e.g.,splines, surface modeling, lofting). Students are frequently asked to sketch solutions to

problems during the lectures.

Modeling Lab

GE103 students meet weekly for two hours in a 40-seat Windows NT computer

laboratory. This lab was opened in the Fall 2000 semester, and is under the management

of the College of Engineerings Engineering WorkStation Group. Each seat consists of aPentium III computer with 256 MB RAM. A high-resolution projection system is

available for demonstration purposes. A graduate teaching assistant is responsible for

each modeling lab section. In addition to the teaching assistant, two undergraduate labassistants are also available to help students.

In the summer of 2000 the University of Illinois became an Autodesk ComprehensiveEducation Solution (ACES) member. ACES members can use any of Autodesks solid

modelers: AutoCAD, Mechanical Desktop (MDT), or Inventor. In addition 3D Studio

Viz, a rendering and animation program, and standalone software for civil engineering

and surveying, architecture and GIS applications are also included.

Autodesk CAD software was chosen because it best meets the combined needs of the

major departments still requiring GE103; Civil, Aeronautical, and General. As statedearlier, the course aims to develop the 3D literacy of students, in part by exposing them to

modeling and visualization software. It would be hard to justify the use of a pure

parametric modeler for civil engineering students, since much of the drawing done incivil engineering offices today is still 2D. With the rich array of software provided

through the ACES program, it is possible to use both AutoCAD and a parametric modeler

(MDT or Inventor) in the course. Civil engineering students gain familiarity with

Autodesk products, allowing them to easily transition to Autodesks civil engineering,

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land surveying and GIS software products. Within the Aeronautical department,

Unigraphics parametric modeling software is used. General Engineering students need to

be familiar with parametric modeling software as well. Although Pro/ENGINEER is themost popular Mechanical CAD software with large companies in the Midwest, it is felt

that familiarity with concurrent engineering and parametric modeling concepts are more

important than an in-depth knowledge of any one product.

In the first half of the semester GE103 students use AutoCAD. A series of 25 tutorials

using Camtasia (www.techsmith.com) video capture software was developed to provideinstruction in the use of AutoCAD. The total running time of the video tutorials is about

three hours. After completing the tutorials students are able to create and document solid

parts. Students are required to complete four solid modeling assignments, as well as an

exercise on perspective projection, all done in AutoCAD. At the end of the first eightweeks, students are given an in-class modeling exam intended to demonstrate proficiency

in the development of non-parametric solid models.

In the second half of the semester, students use Mechanical Desktop for modeling.Students are required to purchase an inexpensive textbook on MDT that provides basic

tutorial style instruction on software usage. Assignments are taken directly from the text.At the end of the semester students are once again given an in-class modeling exam, this

time to demonstrate their proficiency in creating and documenting parametric solids.

Sketching Lab

Students meet weekly for an hour to work on freehand sketching assignments. Each

section includes 18 students and a teaching assistant. A teaching guide has been prepared

that provides a lesson plan for each class meeting. This was done in order to standardizeand structure the content of each sketching lab. There are eleven assignments. All but

three of them (scales, dimensioning, and tolerancing) involve freehand sketching.

Quizzes are also given in the sketching lab. Although example problems similar to thosecovered in the assignments are solved in the lecture, it is still necessary for teaching

assistants to provide examples as well. Depending upon the assignment, students are

encouraged to collaborate in order to work out rough solutions in class. Individualstudents can then execute final solutions on their own.

In addition to sketching, the team design project, discussed in detail below, is organized

and administered during the sketching lab meetings. Here students are divided into threeteams of six, project topics are chosen, team meetings are held, questions are answered,

and progress reports are submitted.

Web Site

A functional course web site greatly facilitates moving to a course with a learner-centered

focus. The Center for Educational Technology at UIUC supports several different kindsof course management software. Some of them, for example Mallard and CyberProf,

were developed at UIUC. The decision was made to build the GE103 web site using

WebCT (www.webct.com), course management software developed at the University of

British Columbia. WebCT provides a shell to quickly develop a useful course web site.

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http://www.techsmith.com/http://www.webct.com/http://www.techsmith.com/http://www.webct.com/


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Uploading files from a local computer to the WebCT server is extremely easy. Once the

file is uploaded, a link to the file is added on a course web page, giving students access to

the file. In addition, WebCT provides the capability to do on-line quizzing and surveying,as well as allowing students to track their grades.

Lecture notes, assignments, selected readings, and sample exams can all be viewed anddownloaded from the GE103 web site. Course documents (e.g., syllabus, schedule,

grading policy) are also posted, as are office, lab and tutoring hours.

In the Fall 2000 semester students were asked to complete a mid-semester course survey

using the Quiz/Survey module within WebCT. The survey results are discussed later in

this paper. On-line quizzes using WebCT were introduced in the Spring 2001 semester.

Also in the Spring 2001 semester, the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations(PSVT:R) (Guay 1976) was given to students in the first week of the semester. In all of

the above-mentioned cases, statistical analyses can either be conducted directly in

WebCT, or exported to a spreadsheet for analysis. Quiz scores are automatically recorded

in the WebCT GradeBook.

Instructional Objectives for Engineering Graphics

Felder (1999) in his workshop on course redesign stressed the development of a list of

instructional objectives as an important step in course design. Instructional objectives are

directly observable and therefore quantifiable. They should include action words, while

avoiding the following words: know, learn, appreciate, and understand. These wordspoint to goals rather than objectives. They are not verifiable.

Instructional objectives can be classed using Blooms Taxonomy of educationalobjectives (Bloom 1984). Blooms levels, along with some corresponding action words

include:

1. Knowledge list, recite2. Comprehension explain, paraphrase

3. Application calculate, solve, determine, apply

4. Analysis classify, predict, model, derive, interpret5. Synthesis propose, create, invent, design, improve

6. Evaluation judge, select, critique, justify, optimize

The undergraduate curriculum deals almost exclusively with levels 1-3, whereas levels 4-6 represent higher order thinking skills. Ideally though, all levels should be covered in

every course. The conviction that a team design project should be incorporated into the

revised course grew in part from the fact that design projects provide the means to accesshigher level (4-6), critical thinking skills.

Engineering graphics and CAD modeling instructional objectives were developed as partof the GE103 course redesign. Some examples are given below:

Visualize the orientation of an object after applying either one or two rotations ofeither 90 and/or 180 about any of the principal axes

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Compare and contrast the characteristics of parallel and perspective projections

Execute a two-point perspective sketch of a simple cut block, given: a pictorial

representation of the block, the ground and horizon line, the principal vanishingpoints

List different types of section views and the appropriate use for each

Choose the appropriate views that completely and accurately document a part Select the modeling method best suited to a given design problem

These objectives are organized by lecture topic. Efforts are currently underway to mapexam and WebCT quiz database questions to these objectives. The course instructional

objectives are posted on the WebCT web site. Eventually the list of learning objectives

will be used as a study guide in GE103.

Design Project

Design project goals include the development of team and communication skills, andfamiliarization with the design process. The project also provides students with the

opportunity to demonstrate and further develop the graphics and modeling skills theyhave acquired in the course. For example, although swept and lofted solids are notcovered in assignments and exams, they almost certainly will be employed in project

modeling. From a pedagogical standpoint, a design project is useful because it challenges

students to use higher level, critical thinking skills (see Blooms Taxonomy above).

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Figure 2. GE103 Design Project Graphics

Teams are formed early in the semester. The student teams are organized in the sketching

lab sections and typically include six members. In the Fall 2000 semester the teams werefree to choose their own project topics. A list of more than thirty candidate projects was

provided to aid in topic selection. Owing to difficulties encountered in providing

technical support and in the assessment of so many different projects, students wererequired to choose from a list of five projects in the Spring 2001 semester. These projects

included a collapsible kick scooter, a rowing shell, a BMX racing bike, a park footbridge,

and a play structure.

Student teams are required to submit four progress reports during the course of the

semester. Deliverables due at the end of the semester include a final written report and a

fifteen-minute oral presentation, including the use of presentation software slides. Inaddition to these, a fourth assessment criteria category is modeling and documentation. In

addition to providing the modeling files and documentation drawings, the teams are

required to provide slides intended to show their modeling effort to best advantage

(Figure 2).

Due to the large number of projects to be evaluated (48 in

Fall 2000, 32 in Spring 2001),

the responsibility for assessmentis largely in the hands of

graduate teaching assistants.

Since the design project is worth20% of the final grade, this is a

considerable responsibility. To

ensure that the assessment

metrics do not vary significantlyfrom one evaluator to the next,

assessment criteria forms have

been developed (Figure 3). Thereare assessment forms for the

written report, the oral

presentation, and for modelingand documentation. All of these

forms are posted on the course

web site so that the evaluationcriteria are clear to the students.

Two evaluators reviewed eachoral presentation in the spring

2001 semester. A singleevaluator graded all

modeling/documentation and

written reports.

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Figure 3. Design Project Written Report

Assessment Form (partial)


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Based upon the four assessment criteria categories (progress reports, final written report,

oral presentation, modeling/documentation), each design team is assigned a team project

grade. In order to distinguish individual efforts within a team, students are asked toevaluate both themselves and their teammates. The system is adapted from Felder (1999),

as described in his curriculum redesign workshop. Based upon this peer evaluation,

individual grades are derived, using the team grade as a basis. The system is, qualitativelyspeaking at least, very good at identifying both the star performers within a team, as well

as the less committed members. Once again, the forms used in the peer evaluation

process are posted on the course web site.

Other project deliverables not yet mentioned include a stereolithography (stl) file derived

from the project model. The Departments 3D printer is later used to create a rapid

prototype from the file. Weight and cost estimates are also expected in the final report,forcing design teams to become familiar with the softwares ability to compute mass and

material properties.

Preliminary FeedbackIn November of 2000 GE103 students were asked to complete an online early courseevaluation survey using WebCT. This was about ten weeks into the first semester in

which the redesigned course was offered. In the survey students were asked a variety of

questions regarding the different course components. Students were asked to rate the

different course components, using a 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) scale. There were 227respondents to the survey. Figure 4 summarizes the responses. Here it can be seen that

modeling is very popular with the students, sketching less so. Many students feel that

sketching is outdated and of minimal value, even when told that it improves visualization.Students also rate the on-line lecture notes, the web site, and the AutoCAD video tutorials

highly. From the instructors point of view, the AutoCAD video tutorials are especially

useful, since they can be loaned to non-GE103 students with the need to learn solidmodeling.

At the University of Illinoisstudents evaluate all

courses at the end of the

semester using anInstructional and Course

Evaluation System (ICES)

form. This form asks aseries of questions, again

using a 1 to 5 scale. Results

for one of these questions,

Rate the overall quality ofthis course, are shown in

Table 1, for the past three

semesters in GE103 lecturesections. The instructor was

the same for all lecture

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GE103 Student Survey - November 2000

3.53

3.54

3.67

3.8

3.94

4.15

4.32

0 1 2 3 4 5

Sketching Lab

Instructor

Course

Video Tutorials

Web Site

Lecture Notes On-line

Modeling Lab

Rating

Figure 4. Mid-Semester Survey Results


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sections shown in Table 1. Although the results are perhaps not dramatic, clearly student

satisfaction with GE103 has improved.

Table 1. ICES Form Results for GE103Semester Lecture

SectionComments Number of

RespondentsRating

Fall 1999 A Original course 66 2.7

Spring 2000 A Original course, some solid modeling 37 3.4

Spring 2000 B Original course, some solid modeling 49 3.4

Fall 2000 A Redesigned course 55 3.6

Fall 2000 B Redesigned course 58 3.5

Fall 2000 E Redesigned course 57 3.8

AE3 also organized focus groups and conducted a number of surveys; both early in the

GE103 course redesign process as well as after the course had been revised. From thesesources it is clear that, from the teaching assistants perspective, the revised course is a

significant improvement. GE103 teaching assistants in the initial focus group conducted

in December of 1999 mentioned such problems as an overwhelming workload (both forstudents and TAs), unreasonable component weighting for the final grade, difficultterminology employed on the exams, and an unstructured design project. In informal

interviews conducted with teaching assistants midway through the first semester in which

the revised curriculum was introduced (Fall 2000), however, the TAs were reportedlyhappy with the course and with their assistantships. Positive comments were made

regarding the workload, the design project, and solid modeling.

Future Directions

GE103 is a work in progress. There are certainly a number of areas that need

improvement. Although students like the hands-on aspects of the course they frequently

complain about the lecture sections. With the lecture notes available on-line, manystudents feel that the lectures are not necessary. Finding the correct recipe for a well-

received lecture continues to be a struggle.

The design project is also the source of some complaints. The main problem appears to

be that whereas student teams are expected to develop a complex assembly model of theirdesign, parametric solid modeling, and in particular assembly modeling, is not covered

until the end of the course. This results in a frenzy of activity at the end of the semester,

leading to lab space shortages and conflicts with other course work. Planning andscheduling efforts will be made in further attempts to level-load the design project work

over the course of the entire semester.

As was mentioned earlier, in the first week of the Spring 2001 semester GE103 studentswere required to take a visualization test (PSVT:R) on-line. The test was posted for a

limited time on the course web site. Having these results early in the semester proved to

be very useful. Students were told that in previous studies, scores on this test correlatedwell with subsequent performance in an engineering graphics course (Gimmestad, 1990).

From the outset the students, as well as their teaching assistants and the course instructor,

had an idea of the level of difficulty they might encounter with the visualization

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components of the course. Plans are to continue the visualization testing at the beginning

of each semester. Talks are underway with AE3 to provide additional visualization

assistance to students scoring low on the PSVT:R.

Starting in the Fall 2001 semester, Autodesks Inventor software will replace Mechanical

Desktop as the GE103 parametric solid modeler. AutoCAD will continue to be used atthe beginning of the semester. Although Mechanical Desktop is very popular with the

students, there has been some confusion with the software because of the fact that it is so

tightly built around AutoCAD. Inventor is a next generation, ease of use parametricmodeler that should also prove to be popular with the students.

In the 2001/2002 academic year a GE103 teaching assistant will be doing his masters

thesis on the use of rapid prototyping to improve visualization skills. The Departments3D printer, a Genysys XS from Stratasys, will be put to use to develop model sets for

each student in certain sketching lab sections.

SummaryIn the fall semester of 2000 a redesigned first year engineering graphics course wastaught for the first time at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This paper began

with some background leading up to the decision to revise the course. The influence of a

UIUC teaching program, the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education on the

redesign is covered, as well as the philosophy, goals and objectives driving the redesign.The results of the redesign effort are then described, including descriptions of the

principal components of the redesign effort. The paper concludes with a discussion of

some preliminary feedback on the redesign, along with a description of future work.

ReferencesFelder, Richard M., Effective Teaching Through Course Redesign, Academy for

Excellence in Engineering Education Workshop UIUC, October 1999.

Sorby, S. A., Developing 3-D Spatial Visualization Skills,Engineering Design GraphicsJournal, Vol. 63, No. 2, Spring 1999, pp. 2132.

Guay, R. B., Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations, West Lafayette, IN: Purdue

Research Foundation, 1976.

Bloom, B. S., Krathwohl, D. R., Taxonomy of educational objectives. Handbook 1:

Cognitive Domain,New York: Addison-Wesley, 1984.

Gimmestad, B. J., Gender Differences in Spatial Visualization and Predictors of Success

in an Engineering Design Course,Proceedings of the National Conference on Women inMathematics and the Sciences, St. Cloud, MN, 1990, pp. 133-136.

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