Tracking Student Engagement with a Touchscreen App for Spatial Visualization Training and Freehand Sketching

The Spatial Visualization Trainer (SVT) App was developed for an iPad to enable students to freehand sketch isometrics and orthographic projections. The App consists of an algorithm that automatically grades each sketch. When errors are made, students can redraw their sketch or take a peek at the solution, which highlights the lines in their sketch that are correct or incorrect. The objective of the App is to teach spatial visualization and freehand sketching skills, which have been show to increase retention in STEM majors, especially among under-represented and women students. A unique aspect of this App compared to other eLearning tools is that the sketching assignments are not multiple-choice, and thus require students to synthesize their complete solution. As a result, data that tracks how engaged students are at different stages of an assignment can be collected. The App was integrated into a 1-unit Spatial Visualization class consisting of 54 students. To assess learning gains, an assessment test was given at the beginning and end of the course. Overall, students’ test performance increased by 7%. The group of students who started the class with low pre-test scores was investigated in more depth, since this group is often at a higher risk of dropping out of STEM majors. There was a marked bimodal distribution in this group, with one subgroup (n=6) having a 43% increase in test scores, and the other subgroup (n=7) having a drop in test scores of -4%. The largest difference between these two sub-groups was that students who did not see an increase in their post-test performance were 74% more likely to peek at a solution than try again without peeking. This peeking metric is an indication of perseverance and how engaged the students were in their learning, and could be used to alert teachers early on to students who need additional assistance in the course. This study illustrates the potential of non multiple-choice questions in an eLearning environment and can provide guidance on how to further improve eLearning tools to teach spatial visualization as well as other topics.