Improving the Learning Experience within MCAD Education: A Tool for Students to Assist in Self-Assessment during Modeling Exercises

Introduction: Current developments and recent work in educational research have been aimed at creating awareness of and addressing the most prominent shortcomings and failures of current CAD education, in particular at institutions of higher education. Such efforts have provided new insights and recommendations, although the work is still limited and the results sometimes contradictory. Obviously, there is demand for a change of focus in traditional CAD education from the declarative knowledge relating to geometric algorithms and commands required for operating a CAD system, in the literature referred to as command knowledge, toward knowledge and expertise which can transcend a particular CAD system. This demand highlights the need for higher level thinking relating to what is commonly known as strategic knowledge, i.e. knowledge of the different methods of achieving a specific task (goal) and knowing how to choose among those methods. This requires, among other factors, a high-quality learning experience during frequent educational exercises in the CAD laboratory, providing opportunities for students to experience both design and creation of their own CAD models and the re-design and alteration of them. This also includes promoting good design practice by relating CAD model attributes and parameters to part functionality and design intent, which, in turn, depends on the restructuring of curricula. Current efforts are aimed at designing alternative teaching approaches and integrating suitable elements of those into CAD education so that it is transformed into a more student-centered, learning-oriented and practice-oriented system. It needs to be better structured so that it efficiently and effectively matches actual student learning outcomes with skills and competencies related to, among other attributes, spatial ability and mental visualization, cognitive model composition, meta-cognitive processes including planning, predicting, revision, and, most importantly, self-assessment and self-regulation (cf. [9,11,12]).