Speaker
Description
One of the core skills of a mechanical engineer is solving technical problems. This requires not only comprehensive fundamental knowledge but also, in particular, methodical and heuristic competencies. Spatial thinking and design comprehension play a key supporting role in this process. The ability to solve technical problems through design, in other words, to create innovatively, is taught and assessed through exercises, projects, or design tasks. However, the use of online teaching poses significant challenges for these forms of instruction, as numerous experience reports demonstrate. At the start of an international master’s program in engineering, the Institute for Machine Elements, Engineering Design and Manufacturing introduced a pre-course that allows students to conduct a thematically structured self-assessment. This is carried out via the ONYX test platform. The course aims to evaluate the students’ fundamental knowledge and their spatial thinking and design comprehension. Before the start of the master’s program, participants are given the opportunity to systematically address any existing knowledge gaps in specific subject areas. This process is supported by an accompanying wiki and an automatic feedback providing hints towards the correct solution. This approach enables more effective use of semester time for the actual course content. We present the structure of the self-assessment, the types of tasks used, and the approach to teaching and evaluating design comprehension in a virtual environment. Additionally, we discuss different methodologies and present results from the implementation in online teaching.
