Computer-Aided Design Centric Teaching: A Hybrid Classrooms Pedagogy For Engineering

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a huge socio?economic impact and impaired routine classroom teaching across the globe. While the situation is still far from over, online solutions for teaching are rapidly emerging and being constantly improved by educators and educational institutions. The questions of how to raise effectiveness in computer-based teaching and learning have become of urgent importance. Coinsidentally, in engineering design, there had been decades of evolution in design methodology towards greater reliance on computed-aided design (CAD) tools. However, the education of engineering design lacks behind significantly. It is not uncommon that CAD tools are incorporated into a course sparingly and hapharardly, often only as an afterthought. In this project, we aim to develop a pedagogy for teaching materials engineering that centers on computer-aided design. This pedagogy can be used to enhance existing engineering courses with a design focus, i.e. those that emphasize "synthesis" rather than "analysis". The pedagogy introduces CAD tools right from the beginning of the course so that students can learn CAD design and fundamental engineering principles concurrently. The intented learning outcomes are envisioned to include abilities to capture design ideas in computer software, perform simulations, benefit from immediate feedback, cope with practical design tradeoffs, thinking creatively, and present ideas effectively.