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Teaching AutoCAD in University - Problem with mass-evaluating AutoCAD assignments


Olliie

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Hello everyone!

 

As my first post here I'm trying to find a good solution for evaluation multiple AutoCAD assignments.

 

I'm currently a student at Luleå University of Technology MSc programme in Architecture and running my newly started company besides studies. One of my first jobs is teaching AutoCAD to first year students.

 

The current situation is that the students is lectured and after each lecture they hand in a home assignment as a dwg. In my opinion evaluating these assignments in a greater depth is a waste of time as; the students are not using AutoCAD much in the later parts of their programme, the assignments are quite simple and the goal, the provided dwg, will be the same between students.

 

As it is 3 courses I'm teaching with 60 students in each and each course contains 6 assignments there are 1080 dwg files to evaluate. Right now I'm glad I'm not the one who have to do the job of evaluating them but I feel it's my duty to bring some progress to this slow process...

 

 

So what I'm asking is suggestions how to batch-evaluate these drawings.

 

My first thoughts were to import them to Adobe Illustrator, each as separate layers and placing them on top of a correct solution. A other idea is using Grasshopper for Rhino to compare the geometry with a correct one giving a more automatic process.

 

Love to hear your thoughts about this!

 

//Oliver

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I'd say to either

1) A marker manually checks each one in AutoCad and grades it

or 2) Give every student full marks for it provided that they submit it

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Clearly, this is not a sustainable method of assessment and therefore, the design of the course is wrong. Just what does each student gain from being told they got it right or they got it wrong unless you are going to follow-up with why they were right/wrong or be able to allocate marks on the basis of method? I suggest you implement a system of peer assessment where students are asked to check the work of another student and to discuss between them, how they went about the problem. A geometry check alone won't tell you much. By looking at another student's work, they get to learn twice over.

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When I went through university, CAD submissions (extremely rare, 3 in various courses over 4 years I think) were worth so little they were given 1% of the total course mark and as such it was marked half haphazardly as either fully correct or fully wrong with no feedback provided. Peer assessment is good for learning although from a marking perspective I can't see it working at all.

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Peer assessment is good for learning although from a marking perspective I can't see it working at all.

 

I guess it depends what sort of university it is and whether they consider pedagogy to be more important than %ages or not. For me a sound pedagogy wins every time - awarding %ages is not conferring knowledge. So I would prefer your option 2 above - allow for collaborative peer review of the project and then award all students full marks.

 

The marking system should not inhibit the learning process.

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Set the goals of the peer review

 

1 window test put actual v's submitted on window do lines line up ?

2 have they used layers ?

3 used colours ?

4 actual object drawn passes 1 then is it complete dimensions ?

5,6,7 ?

 

Still pass all but with comments they can only improve.

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