A Study of Augmented Reality for the Development of Spatial Reasoning Ability

Abstract

Abstract Spatial ability has been reported to be an important predictor for student success in STEM fields (Sorby, 2013). Accordingly, various studies have looked at multiple strategies to help students develop these skills (Ha and Fang, 2016). This study tested the use of augmented reality on smartphones for developing spatial reasoning in the context of a spatial reasoning skills course. The mobile AR app gave students the ability to view digital three-dimensional objects by pointing their phones at a printed marker. They could either move their phones around the marker, or they could move the markers, in order to view the objects from multiple angles. They could manipulate the objects via commands within the app, such as rotations and folding. Various games were implemented in the app to support the development of mental rotation abilities while using the motivational aspects of gamification to increase engagement. To test the effects of this app, approximately 70 freshman early-engineering students at a major Midwestern university who performed poorly on the PSVT:R spatial abilities test had the opportunity to work with this app in the context of a course designed to develop their spatial reasoning abilities. They were compared with approximately 70 students who took the same course minus the augmented reality app. Both sets of students experienced traditional means for teaching spatial reasoning (see Sorby, 2013). Multiple measures will be compared for these groups of students. In particular, we will compare: * Performance on the PSVT:R spatial abilities test at the end of the course * Performance of in-app activities and repeated achievement measures * Student attitudes, including their confidence and enjoyment of spatial abilities tasks * Student comments in follow-up focus groups It is anticipated that the results of this study will demonstrate the efficacy of using the augmented reality app in conjunction with traditional classroom activities for developing spatial reasoning abilities, and that results will align with previous findings regarding beneficial motivational effects and user satisfaction with AR for the purpose of spatial reasoning practice.