Characterizing and Improving Spatial Visualization Skills

visualization skills demonstrate that there are differences in skill levels between students who are potential majors and those who are not, suggesting that students may self-select geology as a major based on their visualization abilities before significant course work. Students in introductory geology courses with very poor spatial skills are more likely to receive poor final course grades than those who have better developed spatial skills. Students’ visualization skills improve in upper-level classes that require more frequent and complex spatial visualization tasks. Differences between men and women decrease in these upper-level courses as well, except for tasks requiring spatial relations (mental rotation) where men consistently outperform women. In a qualitative study at the University of Wisconsin, we tested whether students’ spatial visualization skills improved after frequent exposure to a variety of geological visualization exercises. Our instructional materials included skill puzzles given to all students in lecture and stereographic projection exercises implemented as a controlled study in lab. Comparison of FIGURE 11. Solutions from the start of the semester (top) and end of the semester (bottom) for the skill puzzle shown in Figure 8. Note that the solution discussed after the skill puzzle was administered, shown in the upper right -hand corner, is actually less correct than many answers from the end of the survey. (The concave-up lines should actually fill the entire rectangular box.)