Up-to date opinion of students in the subject of engineering graphics

Abstract

During their first year, students of different Engineering degrees―Industrial, Mechanical, Electrical, Chemical, and Agrifood Engineering―study the core subject of Graphic Engineering. The main objective of the subject is to train the capacity of spatial vision and develop the knowledge of graphic representation techniques, both by traditional methods of descriptive geometry and by computer-aided design (CAD) applications. Nevertheless, the problem is that not all students start this subject with the same level of previous knowledge.

To solve this issue, the establishment of reinforcement courses was established, in order to improve the background knowledge of first-year students who have not previously studied technical drawing, or those students who have been repeating the subject for several years. Nevertheless, we observed that attendance during the classes tends to decline throughout both in the Graphic Engineering course and in the reinforcement course. To assess the effectiveness of this reinforcement course, two surveys were conducted on a group of 16 students belonging to degrees of Industrial, Mechanical, Chemical, Electrical and Food, and Agricultural Engineering; one at the beginning of the course and the other at the end. In this way, we try to find the impression of the students during this course in order to observe its effectiveness. To approach the causes of the general sharp decrease in attendance, another survey was carried out, asking about the reasons as well as their general impression regarding the learning and usefulness of the subject.

Generally speaking, we observed that the majority of students value positively the class attendance, their learning during the course and the usefulness of the subject for their professional future. However, the non-attendance is clearly observed by teachers, especially during the theory classes, which seems to be caused by an incompatibility of schedules and the belief that attending theory classes do not contribute too much to their learning.