Thinking Through Art – A creative insight into mechanical engineering education

Abstract

In the postdigital era, students are expected to hone and enhance their creativity. This work is aimed to enable and equip the students to learn key engineering skills with more confidence and passion through fine arts skills of sketching, drawing and painting. This work proposes a structured methodology to train the novices and engineering students in particular through the drawing and painting of landscapes and nature. Drawing and painting is explored as a learning tool for engineering education by encouraging innovative thinking and learning through art. Applying the methodology presented here shall help students to quickly grasp the engineering concepts, and thus, perform better in STEM courses. Requirements of the postdigital era and its related importance for training of the students in various core engineering courses through art is deliberated. This ideation of “thinking through art” is validated by selecting an appropriate blend of theoretical, conceptual, problem-oriented and spatial visualization based five courses namely, Machine Tools, Material Science, Strength of Materials, Engineering drawing and Machine Drawing. Performance of a pilot group of students, firstly without pre-training in artistic skills and subsequently with pre-training in artistic skills, is recorded. Statistical analysis to carried out and an improvement is observed when students are exposed to teaching which included pre-training in artistic skills. It is found that influence of pre-training of students in fine arts has significant influence on the courses of Engineering drawing, Strength of Materials and Machine tools among the five courses with a blend of theoretical, conceptual, problem-oriented and spatial visualization concepts.