Work in Progress: Online Training in Spatial Reasoning for First-year Female Engineering Students

Spatial ability is defined as the capacity to accurately perceive visual images, build mental representations of non-linguistic information, and comprehend and manipulate an object’s spatial relations1, 2, and 3. This ability can be used as a prognostication factor for achievement and attainment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)4, 5. It is well documented that 3D spatial skills can be developed through practice. Sorby has shown that a course aimed at developing the 3D spatial skills of first-year engineering students has a positive impact on student success, especially for women6. The research team has developed a semester-long online, spatial skills workshop. The content incorporates online resources related to mental rotation, 2D and 3D spatial visualization, and abstract reasoning. An experimental group of female first-year engineering students will participate in the weekly online workshop. To assess participants’ spatial perception, mental rotation, and spatial visualization skills, both the experimental group and a control group will complete the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test (PSVT) before the online workshop, in the middle of the semester, and after completion of the workshop. Results of this pilot study will be analyzed to determine the value of offering online spatial reasoning content to all incoming engineering students. It is our hope to understand how to best increase spatial skills for women engineering students, and doing so early in their college careers might lead to increased retention, success, and self-efficacy. This research also aims to expand representation of women in engineering by creating resources that properly address specific academic challenges for this population. The desired outcome is for participants to acquire the skills needed to contribute to the successful completion of their coursework and ultimately their engineering degrees. Introduction and Related Work For years, educators and professionals alike have been trying to discover how to cultivate the best engineers, scientists, technologists, physicians, mathematicians, and programmers for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers. Spatial skills, defined as the capacity to accurately perceive visual images, build mental representations of non-linguistic information, and comprehend and manipulate an objects spatial relations1, 2, and 3, are widely believed to be part of the answer for identifying, training, and retaining the best STEM talent5. Lohman goes on to define spatial skills as “the ability to generate, retain, retrieve, and transform well-structured visual images”7. This ability can be used as a prognostication factor for achievement and attainment in STEM4, 5. Many studies have found that well-developed spatial skills are indicative of a propensity for STEM5, 3; furthermore, students can improve their STEM-related skills through targeted training to reinforce their spatial skills8, 9. However, there is a wide disparity between men and women’s spatial skills10, which has been a contributing factor to the lack of women in STEM careers6. Significant research has investigated spatial skills over the last 75 years; while many agree that spatial skills are crucial to develop the expertise needed to be successful in STEM fields11, 12, spatial skills are still largely overlooked in curriculum13, 14. Regardless of its implementation, spatial skills are still widely researched. These abilities have been categorized into a number of different classification system; one of the most widely-accepted systems was proposed by Linn and Petersen2. Their system groups spatial skills into three main categories: (1) spatial perception, the ability to determine spatial relationships with respect to the orientation of their own bodies, (2) spatial visualization, the ability to successfully follow complicated, multi-step manipulations of spatially presented information, and (3) mental rotation, the ability to rapidly and accurately mentally rotate a two or three dimensional figure. In addition to a variety of definitions and categorizations of spatial skills, there have also been a number of tests created in order to evaluate different aspects of an individual’s spatial skills5, 15. The Mental Cutting Test (MCT), Purdue Spatial Visualization Test (PSVT), The Mental Rotation Test (MRT), The Lappan Test, and The Paper Folding Test (PFT) are all examples of tests designed to evaluate various spatial skill levels6, 9. An individual’s spatial skills prowess can offer insight into their knowledge sets, skills, and predilections. High scores on spatial skills have been found to have significant correlation to higher overall grades6, better STEM skills16, and higher retention rates in college STEM majors10. When young students exhibit high scores on spatial skill assessments, they are much more likely to pursue STEM careers5. Additionally, many students utilize spatial skills to better communicate, learn, reason, and represent various ideas in a variety of subjects17. While spatial skills are widely accepted as being necessary to excel in STEM fields, they may also be the key to helping make STEM fields more diverse. One of the most notable subjects when discussing spatial skills is how women consistently and significantly score lower than men on almost all spatial skills assessments6, 13, 18, and 19. Many researchers have investigated why this disparity exists; Metz, Sorby, and Jarosewich10 concluded that “these differences have been tied to environmental factors, differences in math performance, and a combination of factors, including the type of toys a child played with, the type of sports they participated in, the type of K-12 courses a student enrolled in, or the types of computer games they played.” Tzuriel and Egozi20 found that children in first grade who completed spatial skills training significantly improved their spatial performance and the initial gap between the boys and girls was significantly mitigated. Many researchers, including Sorby6 have asserted that training dedicated to improving female students’ spatial skills would increase retention rates for women in STEM fields. Targeted training to better promote spatial skills has been found effective in a number of studies6, 21, and 22; additionally, curriculum that takes longer to complete and that incorporates a variety of diverse training methods have also been determined to be more effective8, 23. As technology rapidly advances, scholars and educators have also begun to incorporate computer programs and online resources in their training methods. These techniques have been found effective, are often more relevant to today’s professional landscape, and are easy for students to use15, 22. As today’s expansive engineering and technology fields continue to rapidly grow, students’ development of spatial skills are paramount to their success, and may also be one important key to reducing the gap between the number of men and the number of women in STEM careers. The goal of this work is to find new ways to help educate and retain women enrolled in STEM majors. As part of a first-year seminar course that focuses on encouraging women in engineering, this research team incorporated an online spatial skills development component into the curriculum. Over the course of a semester, 31 female undergraduate engineering students voluntarily took part in the study, which included exercises designed to develop these skills. Spatial Reasoning Workshop The online spatial reasoning workshop consisted of 12 one-hour modules: four origami-based modules followed by eight orthographic perception-based modules that utilized Computer-Aided Design (CAD). The content of each module built upon the previous one, and increased in complexity and difficulty in each iteration. Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, was selected as a workshop tool because research shows that origami has a positive impact on spatial visualization skills1, 24. Origami instructions incorporate numerous multi-step transformations of a square piece of paper that, if manipulated correctly, lead to a 2-dimensional (2D) or 3-dimensional (3D) finished product (Figures 1 and 2). The four origami modules provided origami design instructions, basic symbol explanation, nomenclature used, and the origami task. Participants were required to physically fold a square piece of paper into the origami model by following the provided instructions. Participants were also required to create 3D CAD drawings from given orthographic drawings. Sorby6 states that sketching 3D drawings has a significant influence in the development of spatial skills. Hsi, Linn, and Bell12 also found that a one-day workshop on 3D and 2D sketching led to an enhancement in spatial strategies to solve engineering problems. The software SketchUp was utilized by workshop participants to create the 3D CAD drawings because this software can be downloaded for free, provides tutorials on basic capabilities, and runs in both Mac and Windows environments. Each of the eight CAD modules contained three to four drawing activities (Figures 3 and 4) and the correct answers for the previous module. Participants had one week to complete each module and submit the appropriate task deliverable. The deliverable for each origami-based module was a photograph of the object they created (whether they were successful or not) (Figure 2). The deliverable for the CAD-based modules was a SketchUp file of their final drawing (Figure 4).