Analysis of multi-modal spatial visualization workshop intervention across gender, nationality, and other engineering student demographics

Spatial visualization (SV) skills are both learnable and linked to student success in engineering. Our work was motivated by previous research revealing a gender gap in SV skills that favors male engineering students. A multi-modal SV workshop intervention was incorporated into a first-year engineering projects course with the goal of fostering SV skills for all students. An analysis of SV skills, as measured by the Purdue Spatial Visualization Test (PSVT), preceding and following workshop participation is presented. SV workshop results were studied for five undergraduate engineering student demographic subsets: 1) gender, 2) first-generation status, 3) nationality, 4) socioeconomic status, and 5) underrepresented minority status. Both female and international students were found to arrive at engineering college with less-developed SV skills. Since both populations are rapidly growing in the nation's engineering colleges, closing the SV performance gap is compelling. The multi-modal SV workshop provided substantial support to all students, with a median 23% performance gain. And, workshop attendees improved their PSVT passing rate (achieving a 20-point threshold) from 0% to 92%. Results demonstrate that this replicable multi-modal SV workshop can close SV skills performance gaps among all engineering students.