Does Technology Better Support the Development of Visuospatial Ability? A Meta-Analysis

• In Event: Critical Thinking and Technology-Supported Learning

Abstract

As technologies are widely adopted in the educational settings, they are thought to be promising in assisting the development of visuospatial ability. This meta-analysis explored the effectiveness of the technology use by comparing technology-assisted versus no-technology visuospatial training and summarized 116 effect sizes from 66 unique studies. Using robust variation estimation (RVE) with correlated hierarchical effects (CHE) working model, the result indicated that generally, technologies better assisted the development of visuospatial skills with a small but statistically significant effect size (g ̅=0.31,SE=0.07). Ten salient technology affordances were identified to explain the effectiveness of the technology use. The meta-regression coefficients of two affordances (physical-body-move-ability and real-experience-ability) were close to statistical significance.

Authors

• Zhen Xu, University of Florida

• Huibin Zhang, University of Florida