Abstract:

Traditionally, teaching of architectural construction has been based on making freehand or scaled construction details, made by hand, by the teacher on the blackboard or by the students on the paper. In the last 20 years, new teaching methodologies have consisted of introducing computer programs that facilitate the realization of digital scaled construction details, mainly Autocad, 2D or 3D, as well as other programs such as Sketchup, Rhinoceros, etc.

A large sector of the teaching staff has always shown their reluctance to completely eliminate drawing by hand, mainly freehand, claiming that, although it is true that currently projects are carried out entirely with computer programs, it is also true that architects and building engineers are forced daily in our professional life to make details by hand to communicate with the different trades on site, making hand drawings, a universal and timeless language common to all members of the construction sector.

This new teaching methodology allows graphic tablet to be used as a new tool that combines hand drawing with digital drawing, replacing chalk and graphite pencil for a digital pen. This tool, in addition to making details of great graphic quality, allowing you to make numerous types of line, use a wide variety of pens, colors, etc., allows you to save the result, adding the necessary text to describe the materials and determine their characteristics. In addition, the available programs, many of them absolutely free, allow the entire drawing process to be recorded, to later create video tutorials, which students can reproduce as many times as necessary during the study process, becoming a teaching material of high quality and didactic value, easy to edit and to use.

The generated files, both images and videos, have a low weight, so that their distribution and dissemination is simple and does not create any problem. In addition, the generated material can be compiled creating easy teaching manuals that can be used by other professors or students from other universities.

This tool, applied in the last academic year in the architectural construction subjects of the Degree in Architecture and the Degree in Building Engineering of the UCAM, Catholic University of Murcia, Spain, has obtained very good results, notably improving the academic performance of the students, becoming an essential didactic material, complementary to the existing one.

In addition, this new teaching methodology based on drawing with a graphic tablet has become an indispensable tool in the online modality imposed by COVID-19 in the subjects of the second semester, which has allowed us to be able to maintain the quality of teaching from the first moment of confinement, minimizing the changes produced in the course of lessons.

Keywords:

Architectural Constructions, Construction Details, Digitalized Hand Drawing, Graphic Tablet, Teaching Methodology.