Impact of Optional Supplemental Course to Enhance Spatial Visualization Skills in First-Year Engineering Students

The impact of spatial visualization skills on retention and performance in undergraduate engineering schools has been studied extensively. The National Science Foundation funded a five-year program called "Engaging Students in Engineering" or ENGAGE. One strategy in ENGAGE is to improve students' spatial visualization skills. With this goal in mind, we have developed an optional one-credit hour non-graded spatial visualization skills intervention course at The Ohio State University which is offered to incoming first-year engineering students based on their performance on the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations (PSVT:R). All entering engineering students have taken this test during summer orientation. We are now assessing the impact of this course on student visualization skills and asking the question "Can an optional one-credit hour spatial visualization intervention class be used as an effective instructional tool that enables students to enhance their spatial visualization skills?" The research design is an experimental design with control and treatment groups. The treatment group are the students who score an 18 or below on the PSVT: R and opt to take the intervention course. The control group are students who score an 18 or below on the PSVT: R but opt out of taking the intervention course and enroll directly in the first-year engineering courses. The intervention course is a one-credit hour non-graded visualization class that offers additional representations of objects to be depicted in assigned engineering graphics drawing problems. To date the intervention class has been given to approximately 180 students while being offered to 358 qualifying engineering students. Only data from the first year of the study is fully available for analysis with the course being offered to 193 students in 2012 and 88 opting to enroll. Based on the literature, we hypothesize that students who take the intervention class will perform better in their first-year engineering classes as well as overall academically when compared to the control group. This paper details our findings to date.