Expert Feedback on Engineering Sketching Skills for Object Assembly Tasks

This Work In Progress research investigates sketching and visualization experts' perspectives on the definitions and alignment of object assembly sketching exercises with experience from their professional practice. Learning to sketch is a key skill for developing strong visualization and spatial reasoning skills, as well as communication, representation, idea generation, and idea fluency during engineering design. However, manual sketching has largely been replaced by computer graphics tools in undergraduate engineering classrooms. The expert feedback of architecture, civil engineering, and mechanical engineering instructors are reported on relative importance of eight sketching skills, as well as grading practices and discipline-specific practices. Experts generally valued shape quality metrics over line quality, and suggested new interpretations of rubric levels and criteria. We discuss recommended changes to the rubric and exercises.