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ABET requires that all engineering graduates are able to effectively communicate technical information; however, industry leaders often lament the technical communication skills of our engineering student graduates. Despite years of concerted effort, at a national level, the situation does not appear to be improving. In contrast, the spatial skills of engineering students are typically well above average. A significant body of research has demonstrated the link between high spatial skills and success in engineering overall. But is there a link between high spatial skills and low technical communication skills for some of our students? In other words, are the high spatial skills of engineering students negatively correlated with their technical communication skills? This paper reports on a portion of a larger study examining the relationship between technical communication and spatial skills. Data for this study was collected from 90 first-year engineering students at a large midwestern university. Students were administered two tests of spatial ability and completed phonemic and semantic fluency tasks individually while being video recorded. The focus of this paper is on the relationship between spatial skills and these two types of fluency— phonemic and semantic. Phonemic fluency is defined as how well you can put words together to form a cohesive sentence or paragraph; semantic fluency is related to the size of your vocabulary. Both types of fluency likely influence a person’s ability to effectively communicate technical information. Preliminary findings suggest a weakly positive link between spatial skills and both types of fluency, which prompts further investigation into how technical communication abilities are evaluated and informs future research in the area. Implications for engineering education based on our findings are discussed in the paper. 

Spatial visualization is defined as the “process of apprehending, encoding, and mentally manipulating three-dimensional spatial forms.” Spatial cognition has been widely studied throughout psychology and education from more than 100 years. Engineering students and engineering professionals exhibit some of the highest levels of spatial skills compared to their counterparts in other majors/careers. Numerous studies have shown the link between spatial skills and success in engineering and interventions aimed at enhancing spatial skills have demonstrated a concomitant improvement in student success, as measured by grades earned and retention/graduation. The question remains: How do well-developed spatial skills contribute to engineering student success? One hypothesis is that spatial skills contribute to a student’s ability to solve unfamiliar problems. Recent studies have demonstrated that spatial skills contribute to success in solving problems from mathematics, chemical engineering, and electrical engineering. The study outlined in this paper, extends this work to examine the impact of spatial skills on the ability to solve problems from engineering mechanics. In this pilot study, a total of 47 students from upper division mechanical engineering courses completed a test of spatial skills and also were asked to solve 5-6 problems from introductory statics/physics. Results showed that a statistically significant positive correlation was found between spatial scores and the percent correct on the mechanics test. Individual problems were also examined to determine if spatial skills appeared to play a role in their solution. Some problems appeared to rely on spatial thinking; others did not. Results from this pilot study will be used to conduct an in-depth study examining the relationship between spatial skills and solving problems in engineering mechanics. This paper outlines key findings from this pilot study and makes recommendations for future work in this area.