Impact of Teaching Descriptive Geometry using 3D-PDF Files

as Spatial Ability Training for Civil Engineering Students in

Peru.
Hugo C. Gomez-Tone(1,2)
(1) Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Universidad Nacional de San Agustín de Arequipa, Peru (e-mail:
hgomezt@unsa.edu.pe)
(2) Faculty of Engineering, Universidad Católica San Pablo, Urb. Campiña Paisajística, Arequipa, Peru.

Received May. 15, 2018; Accepted Jul. 23, 2018; Final Version Aug. 17, 2018, Published Feb. 2019.

Summary

The objective of this research is to determine the improvement of the spatial ability of engineering students through the
teaching of the course called Descriptive Geometry supported with 3D- PDF models. This ability is important for those
who intend to study engineering, but there is no consensus as to the best type of training. In this study, the spatial ability
of 216 students (non-probabilistic purposive sample) of the Civil Engineering course of the Catholic University of Santa
Maria and the Catholic University San Pablo of Arequipa was measured. The Purdue Spatial Visualization Test:
rotations, before and after the course was used and the Student's t-test and Mann-Whitney U-test were applied. A
moderate improvement in the order of 22% was found. These results suggest that indirect training of spatial ability,
through graphing courses enhanced with digital technologies, can become efficient teaching tools.

Keywords: spatial ability; engineering; training; descriptive geometry; descriptive geometry.

Impact of Descriptive Geometry's Teaching using 3D-PDF Files

as Spatial Skill Training in Civil Engineering Students in Peru
Abstract

The main purpose of this research is to determine de Spatial Skill enhance in engineering students through the teaching
of Descriptive Geometry subject supported by 3D-PDF models. This skill is of paramount importance for all people
who pretend to study engineering. However, there is no agreement about the best training. In this research, it was
assessed the Spatial Skill of 216 students (non-probabilistic sample) from Civil Engineering at the Saint Mary Catholic
University and Saint Pablo Catholic University from Arequipa using the Purdue Spatial Visualization Tests: rotations,
before and after the training, then the t-Student test and the U test of Mann-Whitney were applied. It was found a
moderate improvement of the order of 22%. These results suggest that the indirect training of the Spatial Skill through
engineering graphics subjects, enhanced and supported with digital technologies, can become efficient teaching tools.
INTRODUCTION

One of the courses that is most difficult for some engineering students to pass in their first year of studies is Descriptive
Geometry because this subject indirectly develops and evaluates spatial intelligence. In Peru, the importance of
evaluating and developing this intelligence in future engineers is not known. The purpose of this research is to identify
and compare the initial level of spatial ability of students who begin their university studies of civil engineering and the
final level at the end of the first course of Descriptive Geometry, supported with a tool for visualization of three-
dimensional models in real time (3D-PDF files).

Spatial ability is a component of human intelligence that allows us to form, recognize and manipulate images, figures
and objects mentally (Arrieta, 2006). This capacity integrates three important aspects: first there is the aptitude, that
is, the innate talent received hereditarily, then the ability, which is the ease and possibility of learning through training
(a fundamental aspect for this study) and finally the skill that allows executing the previous ones (Saorín-Pérez et al.,
2009). On the other hand, the structure of this spatial ability, depending on the mental process performed at the moment
of solving a visualization task, considers two components (Tartre, 1990): Spatial orientation which consists of moving
our point of view mentally around an object that remains fixed in space, and spatial visualization which consists of
mentally moving an object in space without involving any movement of the observer. The latter is the most studied
component and has in turn two subcomponents, mental transformation in which the perception of the object changes
due to a change in the shape of the object by bending, cutting or other actions and mental rotation in which the
perception of the object changes due to rotations of the object in space. Mental rotation is the "vital" subcomponent
(Kösa and Karakuş, 2018) in spatial visualization and the one that tends to show the largest individual and gender
differences (Maeda and Yoon, 2013) as well as being the most related to researches leading to its relation to engineering
(Sorby, 1999), therefore, it is this research uses tests that measure spatial rotation for the purposes of knowing spatial
ability.

For a century, it has been continuously and longitudinally argued that spatial ability is a very important attribute and
characteristic that anyone interested in successfully entering the fields of engineering, mathematics, science and
technology should have (Wai et al., 2009). In the specific case of engineering, it has been shown that spatial ability has
a direct relationship with the retention rates of university entrants in these careers and with the best performance in
courses of a graphical nature (Sorby and Baartmans, 2000), but also with success in other courses in the first year of
studies in engineering careers (Sorby et al., 2014). However, its importance goes beyond the impact of this capability on
the success of future engineers, but fundamentally on the technological development of a country, which has generated,
for example, that the United States of America has been intensely promoting the evaluation and development of this
capability for decades and with greater emphasis in this millennium; as an example, there is the document called
"Preparing the Next STEM Generation of Innovators: Identifying and Developing Our Nation's Human Capital" (CEH,
2010), which recommended continuing and expanding the evaluation of the three main skills necessary for talent in
these careers, such as mathematical, verbal and, with special attention, the previously neglected spatial skills. Also, a
year earlier, ENGAGE Engineering, a National Science Foundation was launched to retain undergraduate engineering
students by implementing three strategies, one of which is the training of spatial visualization skills, which currently has
72 affiliated engineering schools in the country (Metz, 2015).

In our country, the necessary importance has not been given to the evaluation and development of spatial capabilities
neither in basic nor in higher education. Thus, universities are receiving engineering students with very varied
spatial capabilities due to the lack of evaluation of these in the admission processes (Segil et al., 2017). It happens then,
that in the first year engineering students with higher spatial capabilities obtain higher grades in graphing courses
(Arrieta and Medrano, 2015) and, in general, in the other "key" courses such as calculus, physics or chemistry, while
students with poor development of such capabilities are at a great disadvantage when facing these courses (Acevedo et
al., 2015) and those of graphing (Sorby, 2007).

Spatial ability can be developed with training, which according to Baenninger and Newcombe (1989), is more effective
when it is specific, i.e., short (two or three weeks) and oriented to a specific test of spatial visualization, as has also been
demonstrated in practice through countless investigations, highlighting those conducted at the Technological
University of Michigan since 1993 (Sorby, 2007). However, general or indirect training, which in most cases
coincides with the instruction of mandatory courses in engineering graphics, has also shown effectiveness in the
development of this ability, but to a lesser degree despite its longer duration.
duration (Baenninger and Newcombe, 1989). Given this difference and the incursion of information and communication
technologies in education, in the last two decades there has been a lot of research seeking to make indirect training
more effective by supporting the teaching of Technical Drawing and Descriptive Geometry courses with 3D multimedia
and web environments, specialized software, video games, virtual reality, augmented reality, rapid prototyping, etc.
Within the many researches in this regard, at least three trends have been found: in the first are those who consider that
the inclusion of computer technologies such as computer, virtual environments and others allows a greater learning
of spatial skills (Contreras et al., 2013) than traditional methods considered insufficient (Alqahtani et al., 2017); in the
second are those who argue that traditional techniques such as hand drawing (Pieterse and Nel, 2013) or physical
manipulation of objects (Tristancho et al., 2014) enhance spatial abilities and that only then help to complement them
computer-aided design and drawing programs (Pieterse and Nel, 2013) which are not considered useful in initial
training (Sorby, 2009) and in the last trend are those who claim that the combination of traditional engineering graphics
with computer technologies (three-dimensional modeling and visualization) favor to a greater extent the development of
spatial ability (Leopold et al., 2001; Marunić and Glažar, 2014).

Given these trends, the present study aims to find more evidence to strengthen the latter, however, the significant
contribution lies in the design of 3D-PDF models for each topic of Descriptive Geometry, starting with the different
object representation systems, but mainly for the most abstract topics of this subject such as the study of the point, the
straight line, the plane and its different metric relationships (see figures 2, 3 and 4), aspects that have not been found in
other studies, concentrating on the visualization of volumetric pieces and their representation systems.