Methodologies and tools to improve spatial ability

Abstract

In the actual curriculums of engineering degrees in the framework of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the spatial vision skill is considered as a competence that should be developed by students. The teachers of Graphic Design are struggling to achieve that students develop those tasks which require spatial visualization and reasoning abilities. This is the source of interest for developing and validating applications and procedures which might be included in the curriculum of Graphic Engineering for providing the students with good levels of spatial skill. This paper presents a satisfaction study about the tools and didactic material designed to evaluate the effect of attending several intensive remedial courses based on three different methodologies: Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Portable Document Format 3D (PDF3D) intended to improve the spatial ability of freshmen engineering students. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Ayse Cakir Ilhan