An official website of the United States government
Students’ engagement with geographic information systems (GIS) can improve spatial skills, which are predictors of STEM success (Jant et al., 2019). We used a survey motivated by Eccles’s (2009) expectancy-value-cost framework to assess students’ perceptions of their computer science (CS) courses before and after participation in a GIS unit. The unit provided opportunities to apply GIS to inquiry-based projects focused on solving problems in their own communities. Across four teachers, 158 students participated in the GIS unit and completed the survey. We found that students’ reports of classroom equity predicted their expectancy for success in CS and their desire to take additional CS courses or major in CS. We also examined students’ performance on a geospatial problem-solving assessment to investigate their understanding of GIS and their spatial reasoning.
more »
« less
A CS1 Spatial Skills Intervention and the Impact on Introductory Programming Abilities
This paper discusses the results of replicating and extending a study performed by Cooper et al. examining the relationship between students’ spatial skills and their success in learning to program. Whereas Cooper et al. worked with high school students participating in a summer program, we worked with college students taking an introductory computing course. Like Cooper et al.’s study, we saw a correlation between a student’s spatial skills and their success in learning computing. More significantly, we saw that after applying an intervention to teach spatial skills, students demonstrated improved performance both on a standard spatial skills assessment as well as on a CS content instrument. We also saw a correlation between students’ enjoyment in computing and improved performance both on a standard spatial skills assessment and on a CS content instrument, a result not observed by Cooper et al.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10204111
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- SIGCSE 2020
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 766 to 772
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
There is a large gap between the ability of experts and students in grasping spatial concepts and representations. Engineering and the geosciences require the highest expertise in spatial thinking, and weak spatial skills are a significant barrier to success for many students [1]. Spatial skills are also highly malleable [2]; therefore, a current challenge is to identify how to promote students’ spatial thinking. Interdisciplinary research on how students think about spatially-demanding problems in the geosciences has identified several major barriers for students and interventions to help scaffold learning at a variety of levels from high school through upper level undergraduate majors. The Geoscience Education Transdisciplinary Spatial Learning Network (GET-Spatial; http://serc.carleton.edu/getspatial/) is an NSF-funded collaboration between geoscientists, cognitive psychologists, and education researchers. Our goal is to help students overcome initial hurdles in reasoning about spatial problems in an effort to diversify the geoscience workforce. Examples of spatial problems in the fields of geochemistry include scaling, both in size and time; penetrative thinking to make inferences about internal structures from surface properties; and graph-reading, especially ternary diagrams. Understanding scales outside of direct human experience, both very large (e.g. cosmochemistry, deep time) and very small (e.g. mineralogy, nanoparticles) can be acutely difficult for students. However, interventions have successfully resulted in improvements to scale estimations and improve exam performance [3]. We will discuss best practices for developing effective interdisciplinary teams, and how to overcome challenges of working across disciplines and across grade levels. We will provide examples of spatial interventions in scaling and penetrative thinking. [1] Hegarty et al. (2010) in Spatial Cognition VII 6222, 85- 94. [2] Uttal et al. (2012) Psychology of Learning and Motivation 57, 147-181. [3] Resnick et al. (2016) Educational Psychology Review, 1-15.more » « less
-
Spatial skills are fundamental to learning and developing expertise in engineering. This paper describes a new virtual and physical manipulatives (VPM) technology that this research team recently developed to enhance undergraduate engineering students’ spatial skills. This technology consists of ten manipulatives spanning a variety of levels of geometrical complexity. Each manipulative is authentic due to their real-world engineering applications that were chosen to stimulate student interest in engineering. A computer program was developed to connect virtual and physical manipulatives, allowing students to receive spatial training anytime, anywhere through the Internet. Quasi-experimental research, involving an intervention group (n = 37) and a control group (n = 34), was conducted. Each group completed a pre- and post-test using the same assessment instrument that measured students’ spatial skills. Normality tests were conducted. The results show that the data involved in the present study did not have a normal distribution. Thus, non-parametric statistical analysis was performed, including descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and Mann-Whitney U tests. The results show that the mean value of normalized learning gains is 41.2% for the intervention group, which is 33% higher than that for the control group (8.2%). A statistically significant difference exists between the intervention and control groups in terms of normalized learning gains (P < 0.01). The new VPM technology developed from the present study has a medium effect size (0.34) on improving students’ spatial skills.more » « less
-
Experience with geographic information systems (GIS) can improve students’ spatial skills and provide a foundation for success in STEM (Jant et al., 2019). Researchers and educators co-designed a GIS unit in which high school students learned to use ArcGIS software by exploring geospatial patterns in their local communities. Across three teachers, 134 students participated in the unit and completed a geospatial problem-solving assessment. Students’ performance on the assessment significantly increased from pre- to post-test. Students whose teachers had more GIS experience and completed graded GIS assessments scored higher on geospatial assessments and used more spatial language than students whose teachers had less GIS experience and graded on participation. Students’ expectancy, value, and cost of computer science varied across teachers, and may be linked to students’ ability to devote time to mapbuilding and their engagement with a GIS careers guide. We discuss the impacts of teacher training and lesson implementation on students’ geospatial thinking.more » « less
-
This work in progress is motivated by a self-study conducted at Texas State University. The study revealed that the average second year science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) student retention rate is 56% vs. 67% for all majors, and that 16% of STEM majors are female while 57% of all undergraduate students are female. Using these statistics, the authors identified the need to offer motivating experiences to freshman in STEM while creating a sense of community among other STEM students. This paper reports on the impact of two interventions designed by the authors and aligned with this need. The interventions are: (1) a one-day multi- disciplinary summer orientation (summer15) to give participants the opportunity to undertake projects that demonstrate the relevance of spatial and computational thinking skills and (2) a subsequent six-week spatial visualization skills training (fall 2015) for students in need to refine these skills. The interventions have spatial skills as a common topic and introduce participants to career applications through laboratory tours and talks. Swail et al.1 mentions that the three elements to address in order to best support students’ persistence and achievement are cognitive, social, and institutional factors. The interventions address all elements to some extent and are part of an NSF IUSE grant (2015-2018) to improve STEM retention. The summer 2015 orientation was attended by 17 freshmen level students in Physics, Engineering, Engineering Technology, and Computer Science. The orientation was in addition to “Bobcat Preview”, a separate mandatory one-week length freshman orientation that includes academic advising and educational and spirit sessions to acclimate students to the campus. The effectiveness of the orientation was assessed through exit surveys administered to participants. Current results are encouraging; 100% of the participants answered that the orientation created a space to learn about science and engineering, facilitated them to make friends and encouraged peer interaction. Eighty percent indicated that the orientation helped them to build confidence in their majors. Exit survey findings were positively linked to a former exit survey from an orientation given to a group of 18 talented and low-income students in 2013. The training on refining spatial visualization skills connects to the summer orientation by its goals. It offers freshman students in need to refine spatial skills a further way to increase motivation to STEM and create community among other students. It is also an effective approach to support students’ persistence and achievement. Bairaktarova et al.2 mention that spatial skills ability is gradually becoming a standard assessment of an individual’s likelihood to succeed as an engineer. Metz et al.3 report that well-developed spatial skills have been shown to lead to success in Engineering and Technology, Computer Science, Chemistry, Computer Aided Design and Mathematics. The effectiveness of the fall 2015 training was assessed through comparison between pre and post tests results and exit surveys administered to participants. All participants improved their pre-training scores and average improvement in students’ scores was 18.334%.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3366829
