Enchancing Spatial Reasoning and Visual Cognition for Early Science and Engineering Students with 'Hands-on' Interactive Tools and Exercises

通过“动手”互动工具和练习增强早期科学和工程学生的空间推理和视觉认知

• 批准号: 0127579
• 负责人: Ellen Yi-Luen Do
• 金额: $ 7.5万
• 依托单位: University of Washington
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-03-15 至 2005-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0127579&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Enchancing; Spatial; Reasoning; Visual; Cognition

Interdisciplinary (99)Many problems in science, engineering, and mathematics are inherently spatial in nature. Examples are understanding and reasoning about atoms in a molecule, the design of mechanical and electronic systems such as robots, the layout of an integrated circuit or microelectronicmechanical chip, and the transmission of tension and compression forces in a structuralsystem. These problems all demand the ability to visualize and reason spatially.Surprisingly, students of science and engineering are seldom taught these skills.Visual thinking and the ability to reason spatially can be taught and learned: indeed, thisis a central component of architectural design education. We teach architects to manageand manipulate complex configurations of physical elements in space, and architecturaleducators have developed techniques for teaching this ability. In the past, the principalmeans for teaching spatial and visual thinking has been drawing and three-dimensionalmodel-making. Today interactive media and software tools augment these traditionalmethods. Based on experience with teaching visual skills to architectural designers we aredeveloping a series of exercises that, as part of a course on visual and spatial reasoning, can enhance science, mathematics, and engineering education for undergraduate students.The exercises include drawing with pencil and paper as well as computational drawingmedia, physical as well as computer-graphics based three dimensional modeling,and techniques for shifting between computational and physical representations. We aretesting these exercises in a course taught to first-year college students and assessing the learning experience using both formative and summative evaluations.

跨学科（99）科学，工程和数学中的许多问题本质上是本质上的。例如，理解和推理分子中的原子，机械和电子系统（例如机器人）的设计，集成电路或微机械芯片的布局以及结构性系统中的张力和压缩力的传播。这些问题都需要在空间上可视化和推理的能力。从很少见到科学和工程学的学生，很少教授这些技能。视觉思维和可以在空间上进行推理的能力：确实，这是建筑设计教育的核心组成部分。我们教建筑师管理空间中物理元素的复杂配置，建筑工程师开发了教学能力的技术。过去，教授空间和视觉思维的主要内容一直在绘制和三维模型制作。如今，交互式媒体和软件工具增强了这些传统方法。基于对建筑设计师的教学视觉技能的经验，我们将进行一系列练习，作为视觉和空间推理课程的一部分，可以增强科学，数学和本科生的工程教育。练习包括铅笔和纸张的绘画，以及基于计算机图的绘画以及计算型的三型型模型和计算型和技术的练习，以进行计算和技巧和技巧和技术。我们在教授一年级大学生的课程中对这些练习进行了验证，并使用形成性和总结性评估评估学习经验。