TECHNIQUES IN COMPUTER AIDED SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING TEACHING

The paper presents teaching techniques introduced in Computer Aided Design (CAD) courses and practical activities for mechanical engineering students. Learnig outcomes are analysed and presented as arguments for these pedagogical aproaches.
The work was triggered by the need to develop new techniques of teaching to speed up the learning process and to experiment with new methods of teaching while facing the modern four year engineering crowded curricula, in order to cover more advanced topics at the junior and senior levels and to respond to the trend of packing more material into the curriculum.
Engineering education standard set by national authorties requires that the instructor should help students attain certain abilities regarding the applications of scientific and mathematical knowledge, use techniques and modern tools to identify, formulate and solve engineering problems. In the same time, teaching materials require frequent updating, the process of change in the curriculum and computer labs is a constant due to the specific rithm of commercial software development. These challenges drove the needed redevelopment of the existing CAD course.
The basic pedagogical premises of the presented techniques are derived from the constructivist theory: people are active learners and must construct knowledge for themselves and teachers should not teach in the traditional sense of delivering instruction to a group of students but should rather define situations in such a manner that learners become actively involved with the content through the manipulation of materials and social interaction.
The instructor has to face the fact that basic drafting and engineering drawing are gaied during the first year, while most of the basic manufacturing, tolerancing and designing bases are developped during the second and third year of study, in parralel with the apprehension of CAD tools. The paper presents the methods used at Ovidius University to overcome these challenges.
The techniques presented take into account all these specific traces and approach the learning process near to apprenticeship type of comprehension and expression. The CAD course was split in three modules (bidimensional, tridimensional and standard layout representations) crossed over in a matrix like formal representation by main stages: concept definition, presentation of tools available, representative examples solving in interactive case studies, modeling strategies for students in authentic activity, supporting students attempts at doing assigned task, empowering the students to continue independently.
The results of a survey taken amidst students after completion subject reveal that the techniques attain the prior defined objectives: learners are competent to face authentic activities having well based conceptual as well as skill-based knowledge. Basic metrics of the learning outcomes are presented to sustain the efficiency of applied learning techniques and their further generalisation to Computer Aided Science in other areas than engineering or technology: medical informatics, life sciences, applied physics etc.