Abstract:

The civil engineering profession regards a person’s spatial abilities as basics and a significant sign of a person’s success in the civil engineering vocation. The spatial abilities consist of mental rotations, spatial visualization and spatial perception. Assessment and improvement of spatial skills is a significant topic of research in the geometry education. In order to conduct this type of research, various instruments are available for assessing spatial skill levels. We are checking students’ spatial abilities in order to keep improving our teaching methods. A number of studies have demonstrated that Descriptive geometry courses have the potential to develop spatial skills.

The aim of this study is to investigate the relation between person’s success rate in Descriptive geometry course and his/her spatial abilities. There are several instruments commonly used by the authors for assessment to measure spatial visualization skills. In this study we use The Mental Rotation test and The Purdue Spatial Visualization Test – Rotations. These two tests measure different parts of spatial conception.

The objective of this study is to compare the relation between two used tests rates and the Descriptive geometry course rates. We are interested to see which test results are more corresponding to the Descriptive geometry course rates. Choosing the right test to assess student’s spatial abilities is in our interest to be able to improve assessment of the students and improve our teaching methods.

Keywords:

Spatial abilities, Descriptive geometry, Mental Rotation test, Purdue spatial visualization test-rotations.