Mechanix: A sketch-based tutoring and grading system for free-body diagrams

Abstract

Introductory engineering courses within large universities often have annual enrollments that can reach up to a thousand students. In this article, we introduce Mechanix, a sketch-based deployed tutoring system for engineering students enrolled in statics courses. Our system not only allows students to enter planar truss and free- body diagrams into the system, just as they would with pencil and paper, but our systemalso checks the student's work against a hand-drawn answer entered by the instructor, and then returns immediate and detailed feedback to the student. Students are allowed to correct any errors in their work and resubmit until the entire content is correct and thus all of the objectives are learned. Since Mechanix facilitates the grading and feedback processes, instructors are now able to assign more free- response questions, increasing teacher's knowledge of student comprehension. Furthermore, the iterative correction process allows students to learn during a test, rather than simply display memorized information. Copyright © 2013, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.