Improving spatial skills: An orienteering experience in real and virtual environments with first year engineering students

Abstract

In this work we present the results obtained from an experience performed with freshmen students of the Industrial Engineering degree at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University aiming for improvement of their spatial abilities. The work linked to spatial abilities show a great lack of uniformity according to the adopted terminology as a consequence of different approaches, researchers’ field of study and the research's scale. But all research agree on the relationship between a high level of spatial ability and the possibility of success in certain professional careers and university degrees such as engineering which is our actual case. The pilot study described in this paper, aims to improve the Spatial Orientation component of spatial abilities and for this we conducted two experiences or trainings based on orienteering sports: one was performed in a real environment meanwhile the other took place in a virtual environment. The results show that this component can be trained and improved in both environments without finding any significant difference between both types of training.