HR: 0830h
AN: ED31B-1167    [PDF]
TI: Spatial Ability Development in the Geosciences
AU: * Baldwin, T K
EM: tkb@indiana.edu
AF: Indiana University, 1001 East Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405
AU: Hall-Wallace, M K
EM: hall@geo.arizona.edu
AF: University of Arizona, 1040 East Fourth Street, Tucson, AZ 85721
AB: We designed an experiment to evaluate change in students' spatial skills as a result of completing an earth science course. Our test subjects included high school students in earth science classes, college level non-science majors enrolled in large enrollment introductory geoscience courses and introductory level geoscience majors. They also varied as to whether their course had a hand-on laboratory experience or used supplemental Geographic Information System (GIS) based activities. We measured all students' ability to mentally rotate three-dimensional objects and to construct a three-dimensional object from a two-dimensional representation before and after taking the earth science course. Results show an improvement in spatial skills for all groups after completing the science course. We also observed a consistent improvement in spatial skills overall from high school level science to courses for majors, which is possibly related to their increased exposure to science. A subgroup of the test subjects among both high school and the college non-science majors completed supplementary GIS activities. The GIS implementation at the high school level was more extensive and resulted in significant improvements in both categories of spatial ability. At the college level, the non-science majors that used the GIS curriculum showed no significant difference from those that did not, probably because the time spent on the curriculum was too short. At the college level, the geoscience majors had nearly three times the improvement of non-science majors in both categories of spatial ability. This can most likely be attributed to hands-on, weekly laboratory experiences, which were not part of the course for non-science majors. Students choosing science majors typically have much higher spatial skills than the average first or second year non-science major, however there were large variations in spatial ability within all groups. These results suggest that we evaluate teaching strategies in all courses to ensure that students can interpret and understand the visual imagery used in lectures.
DE: 6605 Education
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting