Abstract:

This article addresses the limitations of learning to represent design drawings in engineering due to the understanding of abstraction techniques and the cognitive processes involved, such as logical, systematic, and spatial reasoning. Although teaching strategies exist, they still need a more systematized and scientific approach. These strategies are limited to the moment they are applied, i.e., even though they are active and participatory methods centered on the student, they need to address a way of developing long-term learning. Another situation is that these processes are the basis of geometric thinking, which aims to represent an object based on 2D and 3D figures on a two-dimensional plane. Despite the various teaching strategies developed, teaching remains ad-hoc and needs a scientific approach.

Therefore, This research presents a teaching strategy based on computational thinking to facilitate understanding representative models of objects and design solutions. A survey (closed questionnaire) was used in two stages (pre- and Post) containing 17 questions to identify the settlement of learning and the extent to which knowledge of Technical Drawing has increased. It was obtained from the observations of 57 students from the Electronic Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Control and Automation Engineering courses. These were separated into two (02) study groups: an Experimental Group that received the instructions with the computational thinking approach and another Control Group that did not.

Based on the observation of the phenomenon and the analysis of the data from the questionnaires, it was found that the teaching strategy of computational thinking favored the apprehension of knowledge and technical drawing by students with more significant difficulties in identifying elements of three-dimensional drawing. In addition, there was a greater apprehension of knowledge measured by the increase and concentration of the marks obtained in the learning check by the group exposed to the Computational Thinking teaching strategy. The application of the Computational Thinking teaching strategy in Technical Drawing contributed to the development of spatial vision perception, isometric perspective, and the formation of schematic drawings for technical engineering projects. In addition to being a tool for stimulating creativity, since the initial construction of the drawing takes place in the universe of play, it is a method for transforming more complex processes into more simplified ones.

Keywords:

Engineering Education, computational Thinking, Technical Drawing, Active Methodology, Teaching Strategy.