Spatial visualization skills are important to success in engineering and there have been increased efforts to improve students' spatial skills through training. Sorby and colleagues at Michigan Technological University (MTU) created a spatial visualization course that appears especially promising for improving engineering students' spatial visualization skills (Sorby & Baartmans, 2000). Preliminary evidence suggests that participation in this course is related to higher rates of retention and performance in subsequent engineering and mathematics courses (Sorby, 2009; Sorby & Baartmans, 2000; Sorby et al., 2013). The curriculum may be especially promising for women who, on average, score lower on spatial ability measures when the tasks involve some degree of mental rotation (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). However, the developers of the curriculum completed much of the research and it is unclear whether the effects transfer to increased performance on standardized measures of complex problem solving, another skill in which women sometimes struggle (Halpern et al., 2007). The current study examines whether a spatial visualization course that uses Sorby and Baartmans's (2000) curriculum is related to increased spatial visualization and math computation scores over time. A secondary aim of the study was to determine whether individuals' mindset (i.e., the extent to which individuals think abilities are malleable) was related to whether they chose to take the course and whether mindset differed by gender. Results suggest that individuals in the intervention group showed significantly higher growth in their spatial visualization skills over time, and improved their raw scores on the Purdue Spatial Visualizations Test: Rotations (PSVT:R; Guay, 1976) by approximately nine correct problems. The intervention group's standard scores on the Math Computation subtest of the Wide Range Achievement Test-Fourth Edition (WRAT4; Wilkinson & Robertson, 2006) did not significantly change over time. On average, all individuals in the study displayed comparable mindset scores, irrespective of intervention group and gender. Future directions are also discussed including how using supplemental outcome measures may help to determine whether the intervention leads to transfer effects on novel measures of mental rotation and complex problem solving.
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