Engaging students with fusion 360

christina.harkin — Thu, 18 May 2023 12:03:51 GMT

Hi, I have introduced my year 9 (age 14) students to Fusion 360. I have downloaded some simple tutorials from you tube for them to follow however half the students will not engage with it (half not even putting head phones on to give it a chance) What other methods have people found best in getting students to engage and learn how to use fusion 360. TIA

Re: Engaging students with fusion 360

dan.banach — Thu, 18 May 2023 15:32:01 GMT

Hi @christina.harkin

One idea is to do a project like a phone stand amplifier that the students can design and 3D print. Here is a link to a tutorial that I wrote.

Would this approach be helpful?

Thanks,

-Dan

Re: Engaging students with fusion 360

edcharlwood — Thu, 18 May 2023 20:04:43 GMT

Hi Christina, this is a great question!

I don't know your background or experience so please forgive me if I'm teaching your granny to suck eggs (as we say in the UK).

I don't think it is sufficient to simply give students access to the tool and expect them to be excited or engaged by it, it's really important that they understand the context i.e the huge impact that CAD has on every aspect of our lives and it's amazing potential - you could show them this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Eyd4MwWbO0 or something more relatable and teenage friendly like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbxE9myZrsg

When learning CAD I think there's a delicate balance to be struck between finding quick-wins that celebrate success but also offer agency for student decision making.

Dan’s suggestion of a mobile phone stand project is great, they'll understand what it is and what it needs to do - whilst being achievable only using a few features like sketch and extrude.

So it could be that you combine a relatively short copy-along tutorial like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qGQ2utl2A followed by the open-ended challenge. I like to set some constraints like “you can only use sketch and extrude” which stops them going too off-piste which can be a danger in such a huge platform.

Try as far as you can to keep a note of the issues you had when learning it – even things like using a three button mouse can be tricky at first. Also I'd recommend really encouraging peer-to-peer helping….

I've written a two-part blog post about pedagogical approaches to teaching CAD (1) https://mrcharlwood.blogspot.com/2023/03/approaches-to-teaching-cad-based-on.html and (2) https://mrcharlwood.blogspot.com/2023/03/approaches-to-teaching-cad-based-on_15.html I would be very happy to share and collaborate if you wanted to.

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Engaging students with fusion 360

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