Tinkercad and Codeblocks in a Summer Course: an Attempt to Explain Observed Engagement and Enthusiasm

As part of the 3D printing summer course for undergrads in our university, students were introduced to Autodesk Tinkercad as a design tool for creating and editing 3D models. After a brief period of familiarization with Tinkercad, we presented students with Codeblocks, a tool integrated with Tinkercad that enables the creation of 3D models through programming under the blocks model. To our surprise, students started creating complex and lengthy programs to produce original printable 3D objects. We decided to investigate this level of engagement using a questionnaire to collect opinions and experiences from students and a set of metrics to categorize their programming work. The results obtained are presented in this paper along with our conjectures on the causes of the enthusiasm observed with Codeblocks. Three factors seem to have been key in this case: diversity in the composition of the student group, availability of 3D printers to materialize designs, and a relaxed environment where test and failure were common and acceptable.