Concept Sketches Research Articles

Using Active Learning Strategies to Promote Deep Learning in the Undergraduate Paleontology Classroom

In the most effective learning environments, undergraduates go beyond memorization to become more deeply engaged with the material. Active learning approaches, in which students participate in activities that result in improved learning, promote this sort of deep experience. Educational theories such as constructivism and recent research in cognitive and learning sciences demonstrate the importance of allowing students opportunities to confront misconceptions, reason out solutions, work collaboratively, and construct their own understandings of key concepts. Numerous studies have documented improved learning in classes using active learning approaches when compared to traditional class formats. Various obstacles to implementing active learning strategies exist, such as student and faculty resistance to such practices and the academic reward structure, which penalizes faculty who invest time in innovative teaching. These obstacles, however, are not insurmountable—effective communication of the benefits of active learning for improving student learning outcomes and the recruitment and retention of STEM majors can help. Paleontology instructors have a wide variety of active learning techniques to choose from, including some that make use of our field's uniquely visual and temporal characteristics (e.g., concept sketches, timelines), current research areas (e.g., textual analysis, case studies, guided inquiry), and classic controversies (e.g., role-playing, debates, and panel discussions). New technologies, such as classroom response devices and Web 2.0 tools, can facilitate many of these activities both in and out of the classroom. Incorporating active learning approaches into paleontology courses can help instructors clarify their course goals and learning outcomes while empowering students to succeed.

Creativity through design heuristics: A case study of expert product design

Research has shown that cognition often relies on simplified heuristics; however, few studies have explored the role of heuristics in design. We propose that designers utilize specific heuristics to explore the problem space of potential concepts, leading to the generation of novel and creative solutions. Design heuristic use in the early stages of product conception was examined through a case study of an expert industrial designer working on a real-world project. Sequences of exploratory concept sketches were analyzed for evidence of design heuristic use in generating concepts. This case study uncovers design heuristics that promote variation in concepts and alter existing solutions, supporting the claim that expertise incorporates the use of heuristics to maximize creativity and diversity in designs.

The Effects of Concept Sketches on the Understanding and Attitude in High School Student's learning of Weather Change

The Effects of Concept Sketches on the Understanding and Attitude in High School Student's learning of Weather Change

Acoustical design of special purpose rooms in schools: Cafeterias and cafetoriums.

Design strategies for cafeterias and cafetoriums in elementary, middle, and high schools based on an impulse response-based theory are presented through a series of case studies of existing, renovated, and designed rooms. The strategies include use of sound absorbing materials to control noise build-up for dining areas; integrated design of stage, canopy, shells (where used), and sound reinforcement systems to project sounds to the audience in a multi-use situation; controlling room volume and absorption to allow early sound reflections for clear hearing; providing for clear verbal communication between teachers and students with the audience; and limiting background and intruding noise levels. The impulse response-based measures are reduced to a series of architectural systems that can be implemented using alternate construction systems to meet budget requirements. Standard design concept sketches communicate the intent of the acoustical design to architects, school board members, design builders, and music faculty.

Acoustical design of special purpose rooms in schools: Music rooms.

Design strategies for music education rooms in elementary, middle, and high schools based on an impulse response-based theory are presented through a series of case studies of existing, renovated, and designed rooms. The strategies include providing sound reflections to allow the instructor to hear individual groups of students as well as to allow the students to hear each other, controlling room volume and absorption to allow early sound reflections for clear hearing, and simultaneously provide diffuse, low-level running reverberance to enhance musical qualities, providing for clear verbal communication between teacher and students and limiting background and intruding noise levels. The impulse response-based measures are reduced to a series of architectural systems that can be implemented using alternate construction systems to meet budget requirements. Standard design concept sketches communicate the intent of the acoustical design to Architects, School Board members, Design Builders and music faculty.

The Effects of Small-group Discussion Lesson Using Concept Sketches in Astronomy of Earth Science

Among the various fields of Earth Science, especially in Astronomy, we often deal with the change of space-time in an abstract way. Thus, making use of 'Concept Sketches'-simplified sketches that represent the main features, principles, processes and interrelationships of the learning content by using some concise explanations, signs and terms could help the students efficiently learn the phenomena of Astronomy. This study's aim was to check its effects and analyze the results of the lessons that included concept sketches and a discussion about the field of Earth Science in high school. The control group took traditional lessons, while the experimental group did a small-group discussion that used the concept sketches. After the lesson, some students were chosen to answer a questionnaire and go through an in-depth interview. The result of the data shows that the small-group discussion lesson that used the concept sketches helped both the high-ranking and low-ranking students to build concepts and was able to attract students' attention. Moreover, the students produced long-term memories of the content learned through the class discussion, which allowed them to exchange their own thoughts and opinions with other students. Most of all, drawing pictures, a familiar activity, appealed to the students, so they took part in the class eagerly.

Sketch-based parameterization of L-systems using illustration-inspired construction lines and depth modulation

We present a sketch-based interface for parameter control of rule-based models. It allows intuitive specification and creation of plant structures with L-systems. Construction lines inspired by concept sketches are employed as a way to define and manipulate global-to-local characteristics of L-system models. The overall structure, posture and proportions of the plant are initially sketched by the user as 2D construction line arrangements. They are automatically encoded as a set of positional functions controlling internode lengths, branching angles, organ sizes, and stem shape. The depth in the stem is specified while sketching its construction line, by modulating input pen pressure as depth values. This is also inspired by line depth modulation techniques used in traditional illustration. The resulting positional functions are then used to parameterize pre-defined L-system templates representing phyllotactic patterns guiding the positioning of lateral organ surfaces such as leaves and petals. Results are presented for single monopodial plant structures, all generated from simple input construction line sketches.

Development of CAD models from sketches: A case study for automotive applications

Today products are designed not only for their functional requirements but also for aesthetics. In the automotive industries, styling has become a major part of the design process with class-A surfaces. Class-A surfaces are freeform surfaces with a continuous curvature. The process of engineering any component or system begins by generating a concept that actually describes the product in terms of its form, function, and fit. Concept sketches help the designers to arrive quickly and easily at a stage where a satisfactory design can be specified for detailed design. These concept sketches can be used for development of the digital concept design and analysis of the curves and surfaces. Software such as Alias exists and thus can be used with suitable hardware for sketching the concept of the car body on a computer screen. In this paper a systematic procedure is discussed for generating class-A surfaces from the images of concept sketches which are manually prepared on paper. These images are imported into the sketch tracer module of CATIA V5. A designer can use the image as the reference and produce a digital sketch by tracing the image using CATIA V5 software without adding any special hardware. Later, interrogation of these surfaces for improved aesthetics can be attempted. This method will be useful for the users of CATIA V5 to improve their design practices and skills.

Design Concept of the Future Electric Vehicle-society: Applications of a Multi-functional Modular Electric Vehicle MMEV and its Consequences on the Present and Future Road Net

The car of today is a concept of an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) that is based upon merely the packaging of the engine that is expanded to the body structure of the vehicle. Applying fine electric vehicle (EV) technology a renewed car transportation is created to solve the problems of today's traffic jams, car accidents and transportation smog. A concept of a 'Modular Multi-functional Electric Vehicle (MMEV) is originated, which is a composed system design of 1, 3, 6 or 8 battery-modules of 600mm in width and 900mm in length. This concept innovates transportation over a time span of 5, 10 or 20 years applying four types of MMEVs: the MMEV-Chair, -Tatami, -Road and -Room. It makes it possible to climb staircases, to double the capacity of today's traffic or to offer space of 2,400mm in width for the weaker road user while keeping today's road capacity the same and to integrate indoor and outdoor use of a vehicle while managing time and making communication with people more easily. In this paper the development process is explained, concept sketches are proposed, models are made and verified and a real first running chassis of an MMEV-Tatami is realized to evaluate its size, floor base and hands-free driving mode.

Virtual reality in product evaluations with potential customers: An exploratory study comparing virtual reality with conventional product representations

This paper reports on a study in which virtual reality representations of a car were compared with concept sketches and a real car as a means for customer evaluations. Early communication with customers is important in order to identify customer needs and to achieve response on design solutions. Physical prototypes are often used for these purposes, but they are costly to produce, inflexible in modifications, and expensive and fragile to carry, which has lead to an increased interest for the use of virtual reality prototypes. However, knowledge is scarce of how different types of product representations may influence customers' understanding of a product concept. The study indicated that the different product representations resulted in small differences in the participants' understanding of the car, despite the greater degree of realism in the virtual reality representations and, of course in the real car, compared with the sketches. The study indicates that there are other factors to consider than the degree of realism in the product representations for efficient product evaluations with customers; for example, that the participants are well familiar with the type of product, but also with the type of representation technology.

Concept Sketches – Using Student- and Instructor-generated, Annotated Sketches for Learning, Teaching, and Assessment in Geology Courses

To promote active learning and increase student involvement in their own knowledge construction, we have implemented the use of concept sketches, which are simplified sketches that are concisely annotated with processes, concepts, and interrelationships, in addition to labels of features. When concept sketches are instructor-generated, they help students see how we organize and explain our knowledge. Students can generate their own concept sketches after seeing animations, video clips, photographs, and detailed textbook-style illustrations. They can also generate concept sketches while reading their textbook or after participating in inquiry exercises and in-class demonstrations. By generating such sketches and explaining them to their peers, students necessarily process the information more fully, consolidate their understanding, and personalize the information to suit their learning styles. Concept sketches are also excellent for identifying student conceptions prior to instruction, for directing student study as homework, and for assessing student understanding in exams. Concept sketching engages students in the learning process, develops critical thinking skills, teaches communication skills, and makes the course more enjoyable. Abundant educational research indicates that such sketches promote better student comprehension of the system under study and permit students to better use this knowledge to investigate the underlying processes and principles.

Two Quarters in Rio de Janeiro: The Carioca Experience

Two Quarters in Rio de Janeiro: The Carioca Experience

Towards an ‘ideal’ approach for concept generation

Conceptual design should contain two kinds of steps: divergent in which alternative concepts are generated, and convergent in which these are evaluated and selected. The aim of conceptual design is to develop promising concepts. This requires generating a wide range of concepts (to prevent overlooking valuable concepts), and evaluating/selecting these soon enough (to restrict their number from getting too large to allow meaningful consideration). Existing concept generation approaches are suggested to be used only after concept sketches are available. This raises a question—what should the ‘ideal’ approach be before concept sketches are developed? This paper proposes such an approach.

1302 物理量と図形による設計案スケッチの検索

This paper proposes a method of defining similarity between sketches based on physical quantity and geometry. The purpose of this study is to enable case-based design aid using this similarity : designers can retrieve and consult the relevant sketches to their current design problem, or extract sharable design knowledge by classifying accumulated sketches, from the viewpoints of behavior and structure. First, we introduce methods of describing and recording design concept sketches by physical quantities and geometries. Then, we introduce a similarity definition of sketches consisting of drafting elements. Similarity between pair of drafting elements is defined by combining individual similarity for each attribute, and then similarity between sketches is defined based on the drafting element similarity. We implemented the proposed method as a computer program written in Common Lisp, and examine its efficacy and possibility by applying the idea to some simple examples.

Using concept sketches to track design progress

Sketching is one of the most important activities in the design and development of new products. Designers produce sketches, from concept design ideas through to highly detailed representations of product artifacts, product sub-assemblies and so on, to communicate with themselves and with others. To this end, the focus of this paper is the description of a study of student designers at work in the early stages of design, with particular emphasis on the visible sketching component of the design process. The study has been carried out to firstly investigate the sketching activity and secondly to explore methods or techniques which might improve the efficiency of this activity. In particular, the paper describes a technique, based upon three types of operation, namely lateral transformations, vertical transformations and duplication, that occur between designer's sketches. These transformations can be used to help track the designer's thinking mode which, it is envisaged, will increase the efficiency of the sketching activity.

Thematic Form and the Genesis of Schoenberg's D-Minor Quartet, Opus 7

Schoenberg's D-minor Quartet, Opus 7, is distinctive for fusing elements of sonata and four-movement form into an immense fifty-minute work that coheres primarily by thematic processes and relationships. The numerous sketches for the quartet reveal that the task of achieving both thematic continuity on such a scale and adequate contrast between sections challenged even the normally rapid and "spontaneous" composer, who had to stop at certain points to revise his compositional strategy. Schoenberg resorted at these points to groups of brief concept sketches to work out the thematic associations and their eventual ordering and placement in the larger formal design.