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

Abstract

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.

Experiential learning in engineering education: The role of student design competitions and a case study

“…1 A literature survey on innovative teaching revealed that among various proposals, some authors suggest the use of comics as an introduction to lectures in order to win student interest. [2][3][4] Given the number of recent works found in the literature it seems that gamification is another trend of growing interest. With reference to the literature, 5 the gamification of learning is defined as an approach to motivate students to learn by using game elements in learning environments.…”

TDEG based framework and tools for innovation in teaching technical drawing: The example of LaMoo project

“…Until now, using this approach, the already developed and validated TD tools are the exercise workbook (Figure a) ; the Technical Drawing Learning ToolsLevel 2—TDLT—L2 (Figure b) which is a self‐learning tool designed to better understand the different dimensioning types and related concepts , and the webcomic stripe “The adventures of Mr. Clumsy, the engineer” (Figure c) as a tool to improve students' motivation and their participation during the TD lessons .…”

Theatre teaches

“…For example, comic book stories can be useful to break the ice with the most struggling students. As Metraglia et al (2014) say, comics tell the typical work situations in a funny way, or they help self-recover prerequirements gaps (Baronio et al 2016). The most advanced instruments tested by Violante et al (2016) for online learning environments with three-dimensional functions should also be evaluated.…”