Exploring Links between STEM Success and Spatial Skills: Undergraduate GIS Courses and a Spatial Turn of Mind

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People with strong spatial skills are more likely to show interest and success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Fortunately, spatial skills are malleable, and improvements in them are durable and generalizable. Increasing spatial skills during educational training may be one route towards increasing the STEM workforce. However, there are two gaps in current knowledge. First, existing research concentrates almost exclusively on small-scale spatial skills such as mentally rotating objects. The relation between large-scale spatial skills such as navigation and STEM has not been investigated. Scientific disciplines, especially the "geo" disciplines, and any disciplines using map-like distributions, may benefit from training in large-scale spatial skills. This project tests this hypothesis. Second, there is a need for a long-term spatial training plan that can be integrated into K-12 and university classrooms. One such strategy may be teaching Geographic Information Systems (GIS) skills. For example, GIS skills facilitate faster access to data, data modeling, and data visualization. GIS tools are used by professionals in many STEM fields including healthcare, geography and urban planning, environmental studies, and finance. Effective use of GIS depends on understanding the technology, its benefits and shortcomings, and its relation to specific spatial skills. This project will evaluate the efficacy of GIS training and identify its active components. Findings can be used to inform GIS instruction and GIS interface customization. The project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program which funds basic research that seeks to understand, build theory to explain, and suggest interventions (and innovations) to address persistent challenges in STEM interest, education, learning, and participation.This project evaluates the importance of large-scale spatial skills in the geography, geoscience, and other scientific disciplines that reply on spatial distributions of information (e.g., epidemiology). Spatial skills relevant to navigation may be predictors of success in these disciplines, and conversely, participation in these disciplines may benefit large-scale spatial skills. This project concentrates on GIS as a predictor of enrollment and success in fundamental and advanced GIS courses at Temple University and University of Wyoming. Simultaneously, it examines GIS technologies as a potential intervention to improve large-scale spatial skills and to create what has been called 'as a spatial turn of mind.'The effective use of GIS depends on our understanding of human spatial representations and its limits. Students enrolled in fundamental and advanced GIS courses will be compared to students enrolled in non-GIS low-spatial courses. Groups are compared in terms of their navigation proficiency and associated cognitive mechanisms (e.g., perspective-taking) at baseline and in terms of their growth over the semester. A virtual environment navigation paradigm will be used to objectively assess large-scale navigation skills. Successful learning in GIS courses will be assessed in multiple ways including hands-on GIS lab exercises, quizzes, exams and individual/group projects. GIS presents an opportunity to integrate spatial training early in formal education and thus increase low- and high- spatial students' interest in spatial concepts through creative and hands-on activities. Findings can inform spatial interventions designed to motivate more students to pursue careers in STEM fields involving spatial distributions. Findings can also be used to direct attention to spatial skill-dependent usability features in geovisualization tools and the importance of customization to learners' level of competence.