The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course
Although spatial-visual skills have been found to be a strong predictor of success in and aptitude for engineering practice and related technical fields, comparatively little research has been conducted on its function in engineering coursework, particularly engineering design. The purpose of thi...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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American Society for Engineering Education
2011
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64638 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1407-0723 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7776-3423 |
| _version_ | 1826201602610954240 |
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| author | Tseng, Tiffany Yang, Maria |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Tseng, Tiffany Yang, Maria |
| author_sort | Tseng, Tiffany |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Although spatial-visual skills have been found to be a strong predictor of success in and aptitude
for engineering practice and related technical fields, comparatively little research has been
conducted on its function in engineering coursework, particularly engineering design. The
purpose of this study was to examine the role of spatial-visual skills in a core undergraduate
mechanical engineering design course requiring each student to design and build a robot to
accomplish a complex task in a competition. The researchers hypothesized that students with
higher spatial abilities would produce more complex designs (although complexity is not
necessarily desirable); as spatial abilities are associated with understanding how physical objects
can be assembled, students with high spatial ability may be better able to understand and design
intricate integrated systems. The Purdue Spatial Visualization test was administered to 137
students (79 male, 58 female) at the start of the course, and these results were analyzed with self- assessments of each student’s experience in tasks associated with spatial skills (such as creating
origami models, sketching, and creating CAD models), the complexity of their produced robot,
and their robots’ performance in the culminating class competition. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:54:00Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/64638 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:54:00Z |
| publishDate | 2011 |
| publisher | American Society for Engineering Education |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/646382022-10-01T06:48:57Z The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course Tseng, Tiffany Yang, Maria Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering Yang, Maria Yang, Maria Tseng, Tiffany Although spatial-visual skills have been found to be a strong predictor of success in and aptitude for engineering practice and related technical fields, comparatively little research has been conducted on its function in engineering coursework, particularly engineering design. The purpose of this study was to examine the role of spatial-visual skills in a core undergraduate mechanical engineering design course requiring each student to design and build a robot to accomplish a complex task in a competition. The researchers hypothesized that students with higher spatial abilities would produce more complex designs (although complexity is not necessarily desirable); as spatial abilities are associated with understanding how physical objects can be assembled, students with high spatial ability may be better able to understand and design intricate integrated systems. The Purdue Spatial Visualization test was administered to 137 students (79 male, 58 female) at the start of the course, and these results were analyzed with self- assessments of each student’s experience in tasks associated with spatial skills (such as creating origami models, sketching, and creating CAD models), the complexity of their produced robot, and their robots’ performance in the culminating class competition. National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award 0830134) 2011-06-21T18:31:43Z 2011-06-21T18:31:43Z 2011-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper AC2011-1967 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64638 Tseng, Tiffany and Maria Yang. "The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course." in Proceedings of the 118th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, June 26-29, 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1407-0723 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7776-3423 en_US http://www.asee.org/search/proceedings?search Proceedings of the 118th ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Session Title: Design Communications & Cognition I, June 26-29, 2011. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf American Society for Engineering Education MIT web domain |
| spellingShingle | Tseng, Tiffany Yang, Maria The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course |
| title | The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course |
| title_full | The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course |
| title_fullStr | The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course |
| title_short | The Role of Spatial-Visual Skills in a Project-Based Engineering Design Course |
| title_sort | role of spatial visual skills in a project based engineering design course |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/64638 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1407-0723 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7776-3423 |
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