Enchancing Spatial Reasoning and Visual Cognition for Early Science and Engineering Students with 'Hands-on' Interactive Tools and Exercises

科学、工程和数学中的许多问题本质上都是空间问题。例如，对分子中原子的理解和推理，机械和电子系统（如机器人）的设计，集成电路或微电子机械芯片的布局，以及结构系统中张力和压缩力的传递。这些问题都需要空间视觉化和空间推理的能力。令人惊讶的是，科学和工程专业的学生很少被教授这些技能。视觉思维和空间推理的能力是可以教和学的：事实上，这是建筑设计教育的核心组成部分。我们教建筑师管理和操纵空间中物理元素的复杂配置，建筑教育工作者已经开发出教授这种能力的技术。在过去，教学空间和视觉思维的主要手段一直是绘画和三维模型制作。今天，交互式媒体和软件工具增强了这些传统方法。根据教授建筑设计师视觉技能的经验，我们正在开发一系列练习，作为视觉和空间推理课程的一部分，可以提高本科生的科学，数学和工程教育。这些练习包括铅笔和纸绘图以及计算绘图媒体，物理以及基于计算机图形的三维建模，以及在计算和物理表示之间转换的技术。我们正在一门大学一年级的课程中测试这些练习，并使用形成性和总结性评估来评估学习体验。

Interdisciplinary (99)Many problems in science, engineering, and mathematics are inherently spatial in nature. Examples are understanding and reasoning about atoms in a molecule, the design of mechanical and electronic systems such as robots, the layout of an integrated circuit or microelectronicmechanical chip, and the transmission of tension and compression forces in a structuralsystem. These problems all demand the ability to visualize and reason spatially.Surprisingly, students of science and engineering are seldom taught these skills.Visual thinking and the ability to reason spatially can be taught and learned: indeed, thisis a central component of architectural design education. We teach architects to manageand manipulate complex configurations of physical elements in space, and architecturaleducators have developed techniques for teaching this ability. In the past, the principalmeans for teaching spatial and visual thinking has been drawing and three-dimensionalmodel-making. Today interactive media and software tools augment these traditionalmethods. Based on experience with teaching visual skills to architectural designers we aredeveloping a series of exercises that, as part of a course on visual and spatial reasoning, can enhance science, mathematics, and engineering education for undergraduate students.The exercises include drawing with pencil and paper as well as computational drawingmedia, physical as well as computer-graphics based three dimensional modeling,and techniques for shifting between computational and physical representations. We aretesting these exercises in a course taught to first-year college students and assessing the learning experience using both formative and summative evaluations.