Spatial Skills and their Relationship to Creativity and Innovation in Undergraduate Engineering Design

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This project aims to serve the national interest by improving engineering innovation. It will do so by exploring how spatial thinking skills contribute to the success of engineering designs. The design of technological solutions that enable human society to adapt and thrive is a critical aspect of engineering practice. To prepare engineering students for success as professional engineers, undergraduate engineering education must help them become proficient at design, which requires the ability to think creatively and flexibly about optimal solutions to problems. This project team will conduct novel and potentially transformative research to investigate the interactions between spatial skills and design abilities among freshmen and seniors at the University of Cincinnati. This research will examine how well-developed spatial skills may contribute to the use of a holistic design approach that produces better solutions to design problems. The team will also conduct exploratory research to examine the experiences and interactions of students with weaker and stronger visualization skill levels in a team-based engineering design assignment. This project will utilize well-established procedures for characterizing the design process employed by students. Spatial skills will be measured using existing, reliable tests of spatial cognition, including mental rotation tests. Solutions to open-ended engineering problems will be judged on quality and creativity using established rubrics. The project team will also examine the artifacts produced by students who complete assigned design tasks. A mixed methods approach will be employed to answer three research questions: 1) What is the difference (if any) between the design processes enacted by students with high spatial visualizing skills versus low skills? Are these differences the same for first-year students as they are for seniors? 2) What is the relationship between the overall quality of the design artifacts produced and spatial skills? How is the creativity of the design solution related to spatial skills? and 3) What is the difference between the design experiences of low visualizers compared to high visualizers? How do these experiences change when spatial skill levels of teammates differ? The project has the potential to fill a significant gap in understanding about how spatial thinking skills contribute to engineering design success. This research will lay the foundation for future work to develop educational interventions to improve design outcomes for undergraduate engineering students. Since women are more likely to have less developed spatial skills, the results from this project may be particularly relevant for the design experiences of engineering students who are women. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.