Aesthetic benchmarks supporting the design of domestic safety products: a socket cover protector

In developed countries, the growing number of domestic accidents has pushed firms to find new devices (and to improve the current ones) in order to increase the level of domestic safety, especially for children, that are among the most affected. In order to prevent some of the " electrical risk " accidents, they have made various kinds of devices to cover the sockets (outlets) present in a normal house. These devices are called " socket cover protectors " , and, for the removable ones, their design has always been focused on the making of an object hard to be pulled out from the socket by children but easy to be managed by parents (so, easy to put in and to pull out for them). For all we know, it's never been considered the possibility that the aesthetic appearance of a device like that could be useful to dissuade a child from handling or trying to play with it. In this paper, we claim that a particular aesthetic analysis could be a useful tool if it would be introduced into the lifecycle design of a home safety product – like a socket cover protector -in order to make a more effective device. In fact, our aesthetic analysis is structured in order to make an object that doesn't stimulate the curiosity of children (so, an object not aesthetically appealing), so that the likelihood of a contact between child and device is reduced (and so the likelihood for him to pull out the device)

High School Graphics Experience Influencing the Self-Efficacy of First-Year Engineering Students in an Introductory Engineering Graphics Course

Today's students enter engineering colleges with different technical backgrounds and prior graphics experience. This may due to their high school of provenience, which can be technical or non-technical. The prior experience affects students’ ability in learning and hence their motivation and self-efficacy beliefs. This study intended to evaluate the role of prior high school graphics experience in first-year engineering students' self-efficacy beliefs in an introductory engineering graphics course. It also intended to evaluate the relationship between such freshmen's self-efficacy beliefs and their performance. Two assessment instruments were used in this study. The first is the eight-item Course Interest Survey (CIS) Confidence subscale, which was used to assess self-efficacy beliefs. The second is a multiple choice questionnaire designed on the course topics, which was used to assess performance. Ninety-nine students of the University of Brescia (Italy) participated in the experiment. Significant differences in self-efficacy were found between engineering freshmen from the technical high school versus engineering freshmen from the non-technical high school. A significant relationship between self-efficacy and performance was found only for engineering freshmen from the technical high school

Engineering Graphics Education: Webcomics as a Tool to Improve Weaker Students’ Motivation

In engineering colleges, first-year students come from different kinds of high school and have different technical backgrounds. In engineering graphics courses, the weaker students are the ones entering with a lower technical background. Such students are less motivated and have generally difficulties in keeping high their attention level during the lessons. In this study, the use of a webcomics structured in graphic novels was experimented as a motivational support in an engineering graphics course. Sixty nine students of a class taught by using webcomics as support and 47 students of a class taught traditionally were classified according to the kind of their high school of provenience: technical; scientific; non-technical and non-scientific. The findings showed that in the class where webcomics were used, students from non-technical and non-scientific high school scored a higher level of attention compared to others. The teacher who used the webcomics commented it an effective tool to encourage and stimulate weaker learners to actively participate to the lessons and the majority of students agreed such tool was stimulating. At the same time, some students considered the webcomics representation of engineering graphics topics as too far from the reality. It is concluded that the use of webcomics structured in graphic novels is a proficient way to better motivate weaker students to arouse and keep their attention at a high level during engineering graphics lessons

Issues in learning engineering graphics fundamentals: Shall we blame cad?

Several studies report that many novice engineers result to be skilled in CAD but poor in knowledge of the basics, visualization and spatial skills and ability in freehand sketching. There is a debate on if such lack of fundamentals dues or not to the increasing role of CAD and the decreasing role of manual drawing in the basic courses of engineering graphics. This study aimed to investigate the issues related to the use of CAD and manual drawing in teaching engineering graphics fundamentals by a review of the literature of the Engineering Design Graphics Journal and the International Journal of Technology and Design Education from 2000 to date. It was found that current students: have a lower initial level of knowledge and experience; have little chance to develop sketching and visualization skills if trained only by CAD; and their assessment usually focuses more on CAD skills than on the knowledge of the basics. Solutions proposed to such issues are: introductory courses of manual drawing at college and high schools; assessment of students' initial skills; and tests more focused on the knowledge of the rules and basics of engineering graphics language

Development of a self-assessment questionnaire for basic technical drawing skills: a preliminary study.

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a new self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) for basic technical drawing skills based on the Technical Drawing Evaluation Grid (TDEG) (Metraglia, Baronio and Villa, 2011). One hundred and seventeen firstyear engineering students completed the TDEG-SAQ (first version) at the end of a training course of technical drawing. Eight factors relating to different skills were identified. Reliability analysis ranged from 0.74 to 0.92 for the questionnaire factors and was 0.96 for the overall questionnaire. Concurrent validity analysis showed the ability of the questionnaire to distinguish between genders and high school diplomas

High school graphics experience influencing the self-efficacy of first-year engineering students in an introductory engineering graphics course

Today's students enter engineering colleges with different technical backgrounds and prior graphics experience. This may due to their high school of provenience, which can be technical or non-technical. The prior experience affects students' ability in learning and hence their motivation and self-efficacy beliefs. This study intended to evaluate the role of prior high school graphics experience in first-year engineering students' self-efficacy beliefs in an introductory engineering graphics course. It also intended to evaluate the relationship between such freshmen's self-efficacy beliefs and their performance. Two assessment instruments were used in this study. The first is the eight-item Course Interest Survey (CIS) Confidence subscale, which was used to assess self-efficacy beliefs. The second is a multiple choice questionnaire designed on the course topics, which was used to assess performance. Ninety-nine students of the University of Brescia (Italy) participated in the experiment. Significant differences in selfefficacy were found between engineering freshmen from the technical high school versus engineering freshmen from the non-technical high school. A significant relationship between self-efficacy and performance was found only for engineering freshmen from the technical high school