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2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 386: Sketchtivity, an Intelligent Sketch Tutoring Software: Broadening Applications and Impact

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Sketching is an essential part of engineering education. Engineering students gain various competencies from learning to sketch, which includes improvement in spatial visualization, problem-solving, communication, and idea generation. Although learning to sketch benefits students in various ways, teaching them to sketch and providing individualized feedback to students is challenging. To address this, we developed SketchTivity, an intelligent tutoring system, to provide students a place to practice sketching fundamentals and two-point perspective with randomly generated exercises. Our tool measures line quality (e.g., line smoothness and straightness), drawing speed, and geometric and perspective correctness of sketches. Sketch recognition algorithms are robust to the myriad of ways students can draw, allowing them to draw with one or more strokes. Feedback at the end of exercises aligns with the sketching techniques taught in classrooms to reinforce good habits. The main goals of this project are to improve engineering students' sketching skills and to study the implications of learning to sketch in the context of idea generation, creativity, and engineering design self-efficacy.

Sketching assessment is a challenging task that directly depends on the goal of sketching lessons. To better understand the state of sketching assessment in engineering and design, we conducted a systematic literature review to investigate sketching assessment methods and topics. The results of the systematic review will benefit the engineering education community with a summary of prevalent strategies. Informed by the systematic literature review and expert consultation, an Object Assembly Sketching skills Test was developed to benefit engineering educators. This poster will present our Object Assembly Sketching skills test rubric.

Through this poster, we present our recent findings that indicate the need for more in-depth training on qualitative skills like spatial reasoning and sketching in engineering education. Our team conducted a study over several semesters that tracked students' development of sketching abilities and spatial skills in an entry-level design and graphics course. We examined how those skills influenced the use of sketching in future design project courses. We found that strong spatial skills in an entry-level course positively correlated with sketching frequency in a capstone design course (r(119) = 0.260, p < .01). We found that initial sketching skill in the entry-level course positively correlated with using sketching for a variety of purposes in a capstone design course (r(107) = 0.193, p < .05). These findings suggest the need for more frequent and high-quality sketching instruction in engineering classrooms to improve design skills and spatial reasoning.

To summarize, through this poster, we would like to expand the reach of our free Intelligent Tutoring system that could be used in any university to improve sketching skills in engineering students. We will also present our most recent findings since ASEE 2022 up until the next few months based on our ongoing research.

Authors
  1. Dr. Hillary E. Merzdorf Texas A&M University [biography]
  2. Ms. Donna Jaison Texas A&M University [biography]
  7. Prof. Wayne Li Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]
  8. Dr. Julie S Linsey Georgia Institute of Technology [biography]
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