Enhancing Spatial Visualization and Mental Rotation Abilities Through Developing Serious Educational Games

• In Event: Advances in Assessing Game-Based Learning

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this presentation is to disseminate preliminary results from a federally funded project with specific attention on the cognitive abilities of spatial visualization and mental rotation. Serious Educational Games (SEGs) (author, 2008) have become a viable agenda for many researchers over the last several years.
Within two high schools, students were recruited to ensure diversity of gender, race, ethnicity and achievement. To this end, half of the rising grade 10 students in each school were selected to participate in the project while the other half of the class was studied as a control. When presented with 10 possible reasons for their participation, students chose approximately four reasons on average (range = 1-8). The top reasons selected included: It will help me complete my graduation project (89%), I like video games (80%), and I like science (67%).
A demographic profile of treatment and comparison group students (bulleted below) on these data suggest slight differences.
• Overall, both treatment and control group students include a balanced mix of male and female students across both schools.
• There were several differences in race/ethnicity across the treatment and control groups. Specifically, a larger percentage of treatment students identified as African American and Hispanic, while a larger percentage of comparison students identified as White.
• The treatment group was slightly younger than the control group; there was a six-month difference between the collection of treatment and control group data.

Mental Rotation and Visualization Abilities
Two instruments were administered to assess students’ spatial reasoning abilities. The first of these was the Paper Folding Test, a 20-item assessment designed to measure visualization skills (Educational Testing Service, 1962). Students also completed the Shepard Mental Rotation task (Shepard and Metzler, 1971), a 20-question assessment that provides students with an exemplar, as well as four examples of ways in which the exemplar might be rotated.

Analyses and Findings
A correlation analysis was conducted to determine whether a student’s score on each of these instruments was related. Results indicated a moderate positive correlation between student scores on the Paper Folding Test and the Shepard Mental Rotation task (r = .405, p<.01), indicating that students with higher scores on one assessment also had higher scores on the other.
A two-factor ANOVA indicated that there were no differences on the Paper Folding test (mean scores = 9.02 and 8.81 out of 20, respectively). Differences were found in students’ scores based on school site (F (1, 74.091)= 6.649, p<.05), such that LEC students scored significantly higher on this assessment compared to NT students.
A two-factor ANOVA showed no significant main effects of group or school for this indicator. Follow-up t-tests indicated that NT treatment group students scored higher on the Shepard than both the NT and LEC comparison group students (t(70) = 3.13, p<.01 and t(68) = 2.18, p<.05, respectively).

Scholarly Significance
Of significant importance, 21st century skills and those skills deemed critical for current and future STEM jobs revolve around development and cultivation of spatial visualization and mental rotation abilities.

Author

• Len Annetta, George Mason University