2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A Civil Engineer is often required to “see” and “imagine” a structure or system that they are designing. Being able to “see” and “imagine” is often referred to as spatial visualization. Spatial visualization skills have been correlated to degree attainment in engineering. Spatial visualization techniques can be used to improve student understanding of complex engineering concepts by supporting the process of visually imagining and interacting with physical or virtual forms in an accurate manner. Despite the importance of spatial visualization within engineering, instructors and students alike are often unaware of the ways spatial information is conveyed within concepts in the classroom and embedded throughout the curriculum. Previous studies have focused on the way spatial concepts are communicated in various STEM contexts, including geology and chemistry, but there is a lack of research focused on how spatial concepts are embedded and discussed within specific engineering disciplines. Thus, the purpose of this pilot study was to identify how spatial concepts are embedded in an undergraduate Civil Engineering fluids course and to characterize the ways the instructor conveyed this information. This work in progress paper is part of a larger study aimed at understanding spatial visualization in Civil Engineering from a pedagogical and student perspective. The research team conducted classroom ethnographic-inspired observations of an accelerated 5-week, 3 credit hour fluid mechanics course in summer 2025 at a R1 university in the Midwest. Data was collected using an observation template based on prior research and was further refined through classroom observations in a different discipline and by watching YouTube videos of instructors teaching engineering. Adapting a spatial concept categorization framework developed by education researchers in geological sciences, it was found that spatial concepts within the fluids course largely focused on describing the interactions between two or more objects, either statically (e.g. the pressure water exerts on a dam wall) or dynamically (e.g. water flowing through a pipe). When conveying these ideas, the instructor relied primarily on verbal descriptions – either of the literal scenario or by providing a metaphor to a simpler analogous phenomenon. The instructor often utilized computer-generated diagrams or hand drawings to convey complex visuospatial information. While language and diagrams were used frequently to convey spatial information, the instructor rarely used gestures or interactive physical/virtual models to demonstrate visuospatial concepts to students. Future work will focus on refining the observation template and observing additional Civil Engineering courses to identify the concepts that are inherently spatial in nature and to describe how these concepts are discussed.