Improving the Learning Experience within MCAD Education: A Tool for Students to Assist in Self-Assessment during Modeling Exercises

Automation of CAD model grading is obviously capable of considerably reducing the time required for analyzing and assessing CAD models created by students, though the type and complexity of CAD model that can be analyzed, and the quality of the feedback that is generated, are still quite limited. Recent trends to allow students to use the same software tools as teachers use for grading CAD models suffer, from the methodological and conceptual approach, because grading provides feedback that is based on a finalized result, and thus always contains one assessment criterion that is related to the completeness of the solution. Being structured in this manner, it cannot be a direct part of the process and learning experience during the performance itself, that is the design, creation, and alteration of a CAD model. This paper reports on efforts and results from the first step of a two-step project to improve this situation as follows. Firstly, a learning-experience-oriented approach is presented, aimed at improving skill and expertise development in regard to robust and alterable parametric feature-based solid model creation. Secondly, a novel concept and a key metric for CAD model assessment and core behavior evaluation are introduced. Thirdly, a newly developed software tool is presented. This tool is dedicated to supporting students in putting into practice this learning-experience-oriented approach.