The assessment of computer assisted design practise in ceramic education

The purpose of this study is to compare and evaluate the traditional way and computer assisted ceramic creation and design method in the ceramic production procedure. In the theorical part of this study, the ceramic art and its history, the ceramic art in Turkey and its education, design and design techniques in ceramic education, computer assisted design and techniques and computer assisted education in ceramic education are scanned and a infrastructure is established for practice. The practical part of the study is constituted by the actual practice of 18 third-year student who successfully completed the course of ?The Methods of Ceramic Design? in 2011-2012 fall semester and also currently enrolled for the course of ?Computer Assisted Ceramic Design? at the Gazi University, Faculty of Vocational Education, Department. of Applied Arts. In this study, 18 students, who actively enrolled in the course of ?Computer Assisted Ceramic Design? utilised the traditional and computer assisted techniques in ceramic design. These designs are later evaluated by two experienced and specialist people in the frame of various criterias. After all, the evaluations of the specialists are collected, analyzed, and the results are added to the end of this study. In the part which constitudes the first part of the study, the students are asked to design one functional an done non-functional object. Firstly, students designed their works by using traditional method of drawing on the paper. Secondly, the students are asked to design their works by using Rhinoceros 4, one of the computer assisted design methods. During the process of design and development, the outcomes of the traditional methods and the outcomes of the computer assisted methods are compared and the first finding is the conservation of time during the design process. As a result of the analysis of the findings, the importance of individual talent, showed to have great importance in traditional method. In the computer assisted method, it showed that talent is teachable and students proved to be more succesful with the computer assisted design. As a result of this, we can say that the success rate of a participant/designer depends on not only what is asked to be designed but also the ability of design development opportunities. In the enlightment of the results of this comparison, it is obvious that computer assisted design process helps students to be more successful and it also helps them to develop their design abilities. In addition, participant/designer spends most of their time in the creation process. This detains them from diversfying and enhansing their Works. On the other hand, the designer, who utilises the computer assisted method, finds plenty of time to reflect her creativity while creation and time for alternative designs. This way, with the support of computer assist, it is easier and quicker to get detailed results with no mistakes and results with 3-D imaging almost like real. As a result, the quality and efficiency is increased. In the enlightment of these findings, some suggestions are made about the importance of the course of ?Computer Assisted Ceramic Design? and possible future academic studies.