| The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of how undergraduate engineering students use constraint-based solid modeling (SM) software to successfully engage in computer-aided design (CAD) tasks charged to them in the context of an introductory engineering graphics course. Several designers, educators, and practitioners have suggested that CAD education needs reformation in order to better support learners' application of SM software to the engineering design problems they encounter, and to adequately prepare them for the engineering workforce (Ault & Giolas, 2005; Branoff, Hartman, & Wiebe, 2003; Hamade & Artail, 2008; Ye, Peng, Chen, & Cai, 2004). It was these sentiments that provided impetus for the dissertation presented here---the central aspects of how SM is practiced and how SM instruction can be formulated and delivered are considered in the manuscripts of this study.;The first manuscript examines the application of a novel SM instructional regimen that employs worked examples in the form of tutorial videos. The study occurred over nine weeks in two sections of an introductory engineering graphics course that each met once a week. The cognitive load, performance, and the amount and type of transfer of learning experienced by the participants in the two experimental conditions (treatment and control) were used as determinants for the efficacy of the regimen. The results indicated that the treatment instruction was indeed more effective for reducing cognitive load and promoting transfer of learning, and there was a relationship that existed between the amount of germane cognitive load experienced by participants and the amount of positive transfer that they achieved. These findings draw attention to the tacit relationship that underlies the aforementioned determinants in instructional contexts and it is evident that this synergy needs to be studied further.;The second manuscript proposed the Functional Interaction Model for Solid Modeling Processes (FIM) framework and explored how certain participants from the engineering graphics course practiced and dealt with design intent. The FIM framework was used to dissect the participants' interactions with their solid models during the execution of CAD tasks on two separate occasions. This study not only introduced the FIM framework but it also used a Poisson regression with random and fixed factors as a means of statistically assessing the frequency data produced from an application of the FIM framework to the students' performances. The results indicate that particular components of the FIM framework such as flow, locus, and complexity were more useful in characterizing the participants' solid modeling interactions than other FIM framework components. This theoretical modeling and empirical validation approach to understanding design intent suggests that studying user interaction behaviors based on an underlying cognitive model deserves more consideration in the literature. |
