7-21-03
WEB-BASED PROGRAM AT PENN STATE ERIE
PROVIDES NO-COST SPATIAL VISUALIZATION TRAINING
Psychologists, engineers, and management information systems faculty and students are collaborating at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, to ensure that students graduate with more than communications skills. They are offering students the tools to develop spatial skills, too.
"Imagine any three-dimensional object and, using your mind, rotate that object and picture the other side," said Dawn Blasko, associate professor of psychology. "Can you do it? Very few people have the spatial skills needed to do that kind of exercise. Yet very often, that's a critical skill needed in many careers."
Working with an interdisciplinary team at Penn State Erie, Blasko and her colleagues, engineering graphics instructor Kathy Holliday-Darr, assistant psychology professor Derek Mace, instructional designer Carla Torgerson, and other faculty in communications and engineering have developed Visualization Assessment and Training (VIZ), a series of Web-based interactive computer activities that can strengthen spatial visualization skills.
"Most everyone has heard of writing across the curriculum, which builds writing skills in all disciplines," said Blasko. "VIZ is spatial skills across the curriculum." She also points out that research has shown differences in spatial cognition among men and women, with men usually demonstrating stronger spatial skills. According to Blasko, new research shows that this gender difference can be reduced when women receive spatial visualization training.
The VIZ Web site, initiated by Holliday-Darr and Blasko three years ago at Penn State Behrend, is the national site for the program. Based on the collaborative model established by PsychExperiments at the University of Mississippi, the site permits free sharing of its resources for teaching and research. Blasko and Holliday-Darr have given workshops on VIZ to students and instructors at the college and K-12 levels.
At this time the site includes three interactive activities that are classic cognitive tasks: Rotating Blocks, Paper Folding, and Water Level, as well as a new task to test spatial memory. VIZ includes testing of spatial skills in real time and will soon allow scientists and teachers to collect and download research-quality data from anywhere in the world. It also includes resources for instructors who want to use the activities in the classroom.
The concept for the Vizualization and Assessment Training program actually began when a former director of Penn State Erie's School of Engineering and Engineering Technology asked Blasko to work with their faculty to develop a tool to help freshman engineering students strengthen their spatial skills. Development of the VIZ Web site was supported by a faculty technology initiative grant from Penn State, and student workers have been given undergraduate research grants to support their work in developing and writing educational software. Students involved in the project learn about cognitive science and the way people of different ages and different genders gather information.
Carla Torgerson, instructional designer at Penn State Erie, has overseen much of the student programming in the last two years. "Carla's work has made it possible for us to move toward national dissemination of VIZ," said Blasko. "We are partnering with faculty from several other universities including Purdue and Michigan Tech to improve spatial skills across the curriculum."
Students in any major are invited to work on the VIZ Web site through Penn State Erie's Undergraduate Research Grant program. In the process they learn how to use different computer applications including ProE, Flash, and Authorware. Blasko and Holliday-Darr are working with these interdisciplinary teams to create spatial visualization games for the VIZ Web site, develop modules for graphics engineering classes, and conduct research on ways to reduce or eliminate gender differences in spatial cognition.
To learn more about VIZ, go to the Web at viz.bd.psu.edu/viz/.
Contact: Loretta Brandon 814-898-6063 (O) e-mail: lzb6@psu.edu