Effectively teaching sketching in engineering curricula

Free-hand sketching is an essential skill for engineering communication and visualization. Sketching provides manybenefits to engineers. This paper compares two approaches for teaching engineers to sketch. The traditional engineeringapproach was compared with an approach borrowed from industrial design, which emphasizes learning to sketch inperspective. The Perspective approach was expected to provide greater free-hand sketch ability and sketching confidence,butits impactonspatial visualizationhasnotbeen explored. Pre-and post-courseevaluations measured designself-efficacyand spatial visualization using the Revised Purdue Spatial Visualization Test and the Mental Rotation Test (MRT). Bothsketching approaches improve MRT scores but had no differences between the groups. For initially low scoring students,similar trends are observed as when comparing the full sample size. The results show that the Perspective approach addsadditional free-hand sketching skills while preserving the critical impacts on spatial visualization. Across the course, forboth groups, design confidence and expected success both increased with reduced anxiety about doing design. ThePerspective approach is as effective as the Traditional approach while also including additional skills in the same amount ofcourse time.