Development and Validation of an Instructional Manual in Engineering Drawing 3 with AutoCAD

RESEARCH ABSTRACT

It is necessary to develop and validate a manual in AutoCAD since it is one of the required skills for engineers. Many companies nowadays are looking for graduates who are proficient in using AutoCAD to design their products. It enables designers to coordinate sets of drawings, create tabular data, annotate drawings, and manage sheet sets.

This manual is an introduction to the Computer Aided Design (CAD). The manual aimed to provide appropriate knowledge and skills on how to use the AutoCAD. The knowledge gained can be applied over a wide range of disciplines including the teaching profession, mechanical, structural, civil and architectural drafting.

The Instructional Manual will be very beneficial to all engineering students who are enrolled in Engineering Drawing 3. This will serve as their guide throughout the semester in dealing with 2 dimensional (2D) drawings.

This study used descriptive research design. The respondents of the study were the selected Engineering students from 2^nd year to fifth year levels who were enrolled during second semester of S.Y. 2007-2008 and those who already finished the AutoCAD subject with 1.75 to 1.00 as their final grade.

The Engineering Drawing 3 with AutoCAD Instructional Manual is acceptable to the students and faculty members. Faculty members are still looking for some topics which are needed to be covered and discussed in the manual. Grammatical errors have been observed by the respondents during the assessment and evaluation process that needs to be addressed directly to the author and to the assigned grammarian. 

The respondents acknowledge the suitability of the developed manual to college students especially that the manual provides exercises salient to acquiring concrete knowledge from contents presented in the materials. There is a proper way of associating the lessons to the exercises given in the manual to test the ability and skills of the learners.

There are still some parts of the manual that cannot be learned by the students without the supervision of the instructor. The topics presented indicate unity, coherence and emphasis in general. The manual can assist the student to improve their performance in AutoCAD. The instructional manual in terms of its usefulness is very acceptable to the respondents. The faculty members appreciate the format and design of the instructional manual better than the students. There is a significant difference in the responses of students and faculty members in clarity of the instructional manual. The manual must be carefully and thoroughly proofread to avoid typographical errors of figures and wrong data or measurement supplied in some of the given exercises.

JAKE M. LAGUADOR, Ed.D.

Lyceum of the Philippines University

Batangas City, Philippines