Major Difficulty in Solid Geometry Learning for University Students: Developing Visual Spatial Skills

This research aims were to describe major difficulty for university students in solid geometry learning process and to know the causes of the problem. This research used qualitative method. The data was collected by testing and interviewing respondents. Respondents were 39 mathematics education students in class D, Universitas Muhammadiyah Surakarta, academic year of 2016/2017. The interview was conducted to 6 students who did most errors in major error category based on the test results. The result of this research showed that most of students had main difficulty to develop visual spatial skills in solid geometry learning. They could not visualize shapes of solid geometry objects well. It was because they did not understand well about steps for drawing intersection plane of cube, drew cube carelessly, did not know the shape of cube if the frontal plane was not standard, and remembered the answer of the exercise.