The Project Team are investigating several key issues surrounding spatial ability. In order to launch the weblog discussion and capture your thoughts on the topic, a number of questions are posed below for comment. The questions are central to the research and its various experimental phases. The research aims to capture industry perceptions of spatial ability in education and training through a series of interviews with academic and industry professionals. Combined with a review of the literature, this will lead to the development of a psychometric measure of spatial ability and also the development of learning tasks. Your response to the questions below will greatly assist in the development of this research. We value your input.
(i) How can we improve spatial ability?
(ii) What spatial skills are lacking in individuals entering the profession?
(iii) How can we measure spatial ability?
(iv) How important is spatial ability to designers and engineers?
(v) Can spatial ability be improved or is it an innate skill?
(vi) Is there a gender bias in spatial ability performance? Can it be addressed?
Project Manager.
1 comment:
For about 15 years, at the University of Western Australia, the mechanical engineering school has provided freehand sketching as an integral part of an introduction to visual communication. The original reasons are doing this was that an ability for freehand drawing is dependent on an ability for accurate visual perception. The latter, we think, is important for engineering students, and this can be encouraged by learning to draw freehand. The most startling illustration of this is to ask a student to do three simple tasks: write their name, draw a square or a rectangle, and draw the face of the person sitting next to them. Most can do the first two easily but find the third task very difficult with quite unsatisfying results. This suggests that the ability to move a pencil and make marks on paper is not a serious issue: the ability to perceive accurate shapes and shades of light has to be learned. I am most interested to follow the outcomes of this project to see whether our students improve their spatial perception skills as a result of this training in freehand sketching.
Post a Comment