Teaching Spatial Skills Online during a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown the importance of spatial skills to engineering success, particularly in engineering graphics courses. Sorby and others developed an intervention consisting of software and a workbook in the 1990s aimed at improving spatial skills for engineering students. Implementation of the intervention has been shown to improve: spatial skills, grades in introductory STEM courses, and retention/graduation rates for first-year engineering students. Critical aspects of the intervention in developing spatial skills have been found to be the use of manipulatives and sketching exercises. Due to the global Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, many universities moved a significant amount of their instruction online. The intervention developed by Sorby already had online resources available, including video mini-lectures, online software, and Getting Started videos that showed the basics in sketching and other topics. Partially in response to the pandemic, multiple-choice, matching, and fill-in-the-blank questions formally in a workbook were moved to a Learning Management System (LMS). Sketching problems for modules that did not have those previously and practice problems for complex topics were created and added to the workbook. This paper summarizes the experiences at two universities with offering the intervention in a virtual environment. The intervention at one institution was offered as a remote, synchronous course, while the other university offered the course asynchronously. The instructor and students in the remote, synchronous class seemed to be satisfied with the course overall, while the students and instructor of the asynchronous course seemed to feel at least some regular contact between instructor and students over Zoom would have been beneficial.