Abstract:

Spatial skills are commonly identified as an essential part of human intelligence that gradually develop over childhood and adolescence. These multi-component skills have been described as the ability to establish spatial relations, either among objects or between the surrounding environment and ourselves. Properly developed spatial skills allows for basic interaction in the real world, including mental object manipulation and orientation. An impaired ability to perform these basic tasks has been shown to also affect academic performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Different studies have showed that spatial skill training is more effective at an early age. However, interventions on young adults are not only possible but also recommended to improve academic performance. Although different training strategies have been proposed over the years to improve spatial skills, the existing evidence suggests that involving cognitive processing and interaction during training might improve transference and learning. Consequently, gaming technologies can be particularly relevant as they can provide with interactive and cognitive-demanding tasks, with potentially increased motivation and engagement.
This manuscript describes the development of a new mobile game for multi-touch devices that includes exercises for spatial skill training in STEM students. The game encompasses eight exercises that are specifically aimed at improving comprehension and application of spatial skills, according to Bloom’s taxonomy. Accordingly, the exercises introduce concepts, methods and procedures that involve spatial skills, and promote the use of strategies and concepts in concrete situations that require problem solving and practice. The mobile game requires visual inspection and manipulation of 3D objects and orthographic views through multi-touch interaction. Both objects and views are computer-generated according to several parameters, which enable customizing the level of difficulty of the exercises to the particular needs of the students. Additionally, the narrative and reward system of the game promotes competition among users, which has been suggested to enhance motivation.

We hypothesize that an intervention using the designed mobile game could improve the spatial skills of students with impaired abilities. If this hypothesis is confirmed in future studies, the widespread use of smartphones and tablets could promote the use of these tools both at home or in the classroom, thus increasing the limited teaching materials available for spatial skills training.

Keywords:

Spatial skills, education, STEM, gamification, serious games, mobile app.