Implementing Student-Built Physical Models: Advanced Framing and 3" Cube to Improve Spatial Reasoning Ability Among Freshmen Architectural Engineering and Construction Management Students

To design projects most efficiently, architecture and engineering students need to develop their spatial reasoning in order to augment their ability to visualize and manipulate two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects. At our institution, architectural engineering and construction management students collectively attend 2 non-design courses (Graphics I (manual drafting) and Materials and Methods of Construction I courses) in their freshmen year. Other than brief exercises, such as the incorporation of a field trip to a construction site, a soil sieve test lab, and provision of material samples and construction videos in the classroom, both of these courses are heavily dependent on two and three-dimensional graphics to depict how buildings are drafted and assembled. Physical model building is not part of the current curriculum for either of these two courses. This study provides quantitative results from a spatial reasoning ability test and qualitative results from student surveys given to four separate sections of freshmen – Graphics I test and control groups and Materials and Methods of Construction I test and control groups in 2010. The Materials and Methods of Construction I test group had built an advanced framing model (an energy-saving framing system) and the Graphics I test group had built a 3‖ cube model of solids and voids as part of their courses prior to the spatial test and survey. The control group in each course prepared an axonometric drawing instead of a physical model as part of their course. The statistically significant results of the quantitative test and student answers to the qualitative survey indicate that faculty of non-design courses should integrate student built physical models as a tool to improve students‘ spatial reasoning ability.