High School Classroom Use

william_finnegan

Can anyone provide any insight into using Onshape as a high school class? We are considering using it next year in our engineering class.

derek_ward

I am also interested in using Onshape in a high school engineering course that I'll be teaching in a few years.  I will need to develop a base curriculum within a few months and if I learn any insights I'll let you know.  

john_mceleney

@william_finnegan @derek_ward my son taught Onshape in his high school (he's a senior in high school) and he taught it to the geometry students in 9th grade. Here's a link to Onshape curriculum: https://www.onshape.com/edu/educators 

cathy_landergan779

I am also considering using it in a high school CAD class. So my question is this, since it's so easy to share files what would prevent plagiarism?

brian_brady

cathy_landergan779 said:

I am also considering using it in a high school CAD class. So my question is this, since it's so easy to share files what would prevent plagiarism?

I used it for teaching a college class so I can answer this question. If you think there was cheating going on, click on the "Manage Versions and History" icon near the top left. Click on the "show changes" for Main or the appropriate version. I required my students to make a version called "Submittal" that I graded. I did not grade anything added after the submittal version was created, that was the last thing they were supposed to do before sharing the document with me.

In the History list, if you hover your cursor over an item it will tell you who made that change. Any change not made by the student who shared with me meant that their was cheating. They new I checked this, so I only had one or two times where anybody tried to get away with something all semester long.

I have asked about downloading or viewing a complete history but that has not been implemented. So if the document is complicated or has a lot of history, you will have to click "show more" a lot to get to all changes. I usually just spot checked.

Brian

paul_bunnell

Here is my experience as a teacher:
I created a read only file as a starting point and shared it with my class.  Students then made their own copy, edited it, and shared their copy with me.  When I look at the history of their copy it lists them as the owner with no indication that I ever owned it or that the document was copied for a source. However, in the history the version labeled "Start" is not a blank work space. It lists them as the owner, but the earliest history of the file is a fully formed part, so that is a give away.  None of my history that went into making that file carried over into their copy.  

And if two students try to share a file with each other and then both share it with the teacher the fully history of the file would still be present and show which student made each edit.

On the whole, it would be nice if copied files DID retain their history.  That would be enormously helpful in many cases and I hope Onshape does this in the future.  But if they do, a simultaneous change should be that the edits retain the original authors's name.  In other posts concerned with authorship people have called for "original author" to be identified on copied documents but since a document might be changed by multiple sequential people it needs to not only retain the original owner, but the author of each edit.  As long as that happens, plagiarism in an academic setting will still be detectable.

lana

@paul_bunnell
To save you some time: whenever a copy is made regardless of permissions on the original document, the previous history is not carries over. Start version corresponds to the state of the document being copied.

KatieHuffman

There is a new Instructor community forum category set up to help teachers and professors both in secondary education and higher education environments with developing and sharing curriculum, and answering each other's questions for this exact purpose. Check it out here!

brian_brady

KatieHuffman said:

There is a new Instructor community forum category set up to help teachers and professors both in secondary education and higher education environments with developing and sharing curriculum, and answering each other's questions for this exact purpose. Check it out here!

When I click on the link you gave I get a permission error. Is the category not ready or did somebody forget to flip the switch?

derek_ward

brian_brady said:

KatieHuffman said:

There is a new Instructor community forum category set up to help teachers and professors both in secondary education and higher education environments with developing and sharing curriculum, and answering each other's questions for this exact purpose. Check it out here!

When I click on the link you gave I get a permission error. Is the category not ready or did somebody forget to flip the switch?

I get the same thing. I'm going to start teaching Onshape to my class in a few days. I'll write up my experience at some point.

Stefan_DMS

cathy_landergan779 said:

I am also considering using it in a high school CAD class. So my question is this, since it's so easy to share files what would prevent plagiarism?

When I first learned CAD in class we all had to learn the basics modelling all the same thing, same sketches, features. When it came to assignments and grading, we had to apply our skills to a specific object. So we had a physical object (or a hand-drawn sketch of an object) and we had to model and render this particular object. Each student had their own object so there wasn't much point to plagiarise as we all had different objects to model. (most of the objects were provided by the teacher.)
In the engineering world especially in product development, we are encouraged to see how other things are made and modelled, learn to adapt and improve what others have done in the past. If you can create a course where seeing/sharing and analysing other peoples methods, your students will be able to learn much faster than you expect.
Also makes it easy to get student's engagement if they get the option to model an object of their own choice.

brian_brady

Stefan_DMS said:

cathy_landergan779 said:

I am also considering using it in a high school CAD class. So my question is this, since it's so easy to share files what would prevent plagiarism?

When I first learned CAD in class we all had to learn the basics modelling all the same thing, same sketches, features. When it came to assignments and grading, we had to apply our skills to a specific object. So we had a physical object (or a hand-drawn sketch of an object) and we had to model and render this particular object. Each student had their own object so there wasn't much point to plagiarise as we all had different objects to model. (most of the objects were provided by the teacher.)
In the engineering world especially in product development, we are encouraged to see how other things are made and modelled, learn to adapt and improve what others have done in the past. If you can create a course where seeing/sharing and analysing other peoples methods, your students will be able to learn much faster than you expect.
Also makes it easy to get student's engagement if they get the option to model an object of their own choice.

Stefan,

I agree that having students model objects of their own choice (even if from a restricted set of objects provided by the instructor) is a good idea and should be included in learning how to use CAD software and how to design. I generally do some of this in my classes and could/should possibly do more. When I teach CAD I am more interested in students thinking about the intent of the part, how it might be manufactured and inspected, how it will fit with other parts, how to make their design robust to withstand changes, and other similar ideas than I am in what buttons to push to make a pretty picture. I want them to put into their sketches and feature creation the information necessary for the next person to come along and understand what they wanted and what was important to the design. This is often times easier for an instructor to accomplish by giving all students the same part(s) with specific instructions regarding intent to make sure they can use the tool that is CAD to model the part(s) with said intent. There needs to be room in teaching design with CAD for both methods.

KatieHuffman

KatieHuffman said:

There is a new Instructor community forum category set up to help teachers and professors both in secondary education and higher education environments with developing and sharing curriculum, and answering each other's questions for this exact purpose. Check it out here!

I apologize, I jumped the gun a little bit. We are actively working on this new forum category for instructors to share lessons and Onshape experiences in the classroom with each other, but its not quite ready yet. We are working hard and plan to roll it out soon, so keep a eye out for it!