Lessons Learned in Engaging Engineering Students by Improving Their Spatial Visualization Skills

Research has shown that students with enhanced spatial visualization skills, the ability to see and think in 3-D, are more successful in engineering, technology, computer science, chemistry and mathematics courses. These skills can be developed with training and practice. Kettering University is one of the 10 selected schools in the NSF - ENGAGE Group (http://www.engageengineering.org). The three main themes of the ENGAGE grant are Faculty Interaction, Everyday Engineering Examples, and Spatial Visualization. This paper presents lessons learned in an approach to improve students' spatial visualization skills for increased student success. The enhanced methodology includes three steps. The first is Pre-Test: the PSVT-R test to assess students' spatial visualization skills created by Purdue University, a partner school in the ENGAGE project, was given to all engineering and science freshman students at Kettering University. The second step is Remediation: based on the results, all students who scored lower than 60% were required to take a spatial visualization course which was developed as one of the deliverables in the NSF-ENGAGE grant. The third step is Post-Test: by testing students' spatial visualization skills after the spatial visualization training, all the students who participated the training passed the post test. Further enhancements to the existing Engineering Graphics course have been made as lessons learned.