Measurement of first year engineering students cognitive activities using a spatial skills test and an electrical concepts test: Implications for curriculum design

Spatial ability has been shown to be a significant factor in determining student performance, grades and retention in engineering education. Within the discipline of electrical engineering, the conceptual understanding of electrical circuits and systems plays a key role in student learning. Both spatial ability and conceptual understanding are measures of students' cognitive activities that provide some insight into student thinking and reasoning about electrical engineering and positively contribute to student success in learning. In this paper we report two studies that examined spatial abilities of students enrolled in an electrical engineering and a common first year engineering programme and compare these data to academic performance and conceptual understanding of simple direct current (dc) electric circuits. The first study showed a small but significant correlation between grades and spatial skills but that spatial ability did not change with the number of years spent studying electrical engineering. A significant correlation was found in the second study between spatial ability and conceptual understanding with most of this correlation explained by one particular group of topics on the test related to comprehending circuit diagrams.