Introduction

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This Open Educational Resource is for the beginning level of both interior design and architecture students who learn computer graphic communication software.

The author created and developed a total of 22 tutorials to teach three computer graphic applications, AutoCAD, Revit, and Enscape. AutoCAD is an essential computer drafting software which is 2D drawing software. Revit is a Building Information Modeling software, which is 3D based modeling software. Lastly, Enscape is a real-time rendering and virtual reality plug-in for users’ 4D experiences. These three applications are the primary programs that design students should utilize for his/her design projects throughout an individual’s academic life in the College of Design and the student’s future jobs.

Many design students rely on the instructor’s demonstrations during lectures for acquiring technical knowledge. Additionally, design students have tutorials from multiple resources such as textbooks and videos from that internet that are informed by the instructors or the students’ own search results. Typically, a textbook deals with only an application. And videos from the internet include unnecessary information like commercial advertisements. These separated sources of information often cause a student’s confusion and frustration. For these reasons, the book provides a unified format of tutorials to cover the three applications. The tutorials consist of both text and image-based tutorials as the primary resource and video-based tutorials as the supplemental materials.

An instructor will demonstrate using the text and image-based tutorials, and share the link for the video-based tutorials after the lectures for student’s practice. This book provides two learning experiences. One is to create an architectural model by following the instructions provided in this book. The second is to create your own model by referencing the information from this book.

Students learning outcomes

The tutorials in this book may have positive impacts on students’ learning by 1) providing unified lecture contents to learn the main three graphic communication applications for design students, 2) offering free and readily available materials, 3) supporting two different formats of tutorials for different types of learner.

Affordability of the teaching contents

This bool help students’ finance because the materials are free with Creative Common. Whenever students need, the tutorials will be available without paying for the textbook. Currently, the course uses a textbook for only one application, Revit. It is because of the price of the textbook, and also the amount of information that the course covers. If the course relay on textbooks, students in the course should purchase two books, one for AutoCAD and the other for Revit, a textbook for Enscape is not published yet.

Pedagogical strategies

The author is developing hybrid tutorials to support diverse student’s learning styles. Some students tend to learn lecture contents through readings, some students learn lecture contents more effectively with video and audio, and some students learn lecture contents with in-person coaches. The book implements two types of tutorials to cover visual learners and auditory learners. The tutorials also can be used for new instructors to teach similar lecture contents in the future. The instructors can investigate their time to prepare to deliver the lecture contents rather than to create the lecture contents.