2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work in progress research presents the testing of the content of a spatial skill learning supplementary application. Spatial skill education research has been an ongoing endeavor that focuses on improving how learning and teaching can happen in spatial skill development. Research on this front in engineering education has revolved around using tools, such as the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotation (PSVT:R), to assess students’ spatial skill, devising technology to help grow spatial skills among students, and focusing efforts to improve the learning experiences for students identified with historically minoritized communities. However, recent research has also called for a critical examination of how spatial skill education has been conducted and the potential to reimagine how such education can be improved and done.

To begin contributing to such potential in spatial skill education, we specifically focus on developing a learning supplementary application, known as the SSTAR app. SSTAR stands for Students’ Spatial Skills through Augmented Reality. This app will be based in augmented reality (AR), to provide students more opportunities to help them grow their spatial skills. The major goal of our study is to create and shape an accessible AR application that students can use on their smart devices to help visualize objects with several features, including color-codes that consider accessibility to students, step-by-step component combination to form the object with gamification elements, hand manipulation of the object, and video providing feedback while students work on forming the objects. The app is currently being developed for its content (focusing on the story board of how students would learn from the application to improve their spatial skills), while the development on AR will begin after content testing.

Our paper will present our testing of the app content with students for the first time, which is on track to happen in the fall of 2024. The testing study will involve students who have taken spatial visualization and CAD modeling courses to use the app while explaining their experiences in a think-aloud process. We expect to record the students’ verbalized thought process while they use the app from the content perspective to understand how the designed content could have helped them improve their spatial skills. We expect preliminary finding to be presented in the paper and at the conference.