Examination of Rural vs. Urban middle school students 3D spatial visualization skills

Victoria Nelson Author

07/28/2020 Added

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This video explains the research I have done for the summer Nebraska engineering research program.

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[00:00:03.790]Hello, my name is Victoria Nelson
[00:00:06.270]and the research project I worked on
[00:00:08.300]was over the examination
[00:00:09.760]of rural versus urban middle school students
[00:00:12.960]3D spatial visualization skills.
[00:00:15.720]I worked on this with Doctor Grace Panther.
[00:00:19.650]3D spatial visualization skills are very important
[00:00:23.400]because they help indicate if a student
[00:00:26.200]is going to go into a STEM field
[00:00:27.930]and how successful they will be in that STEM field.
[00:00:32.580]Current research shows that male students tend to do better
[00:00:36.690]on 3D spatial visualization tests than female students.
[00:00:41.910]Students that come from high
[00:00:43.800]or average socioeconomic statuses
[00:00:46.560]also tend to do better on 3D spatial visualization tests
[00:00:50.400]than students that come from a low socioeconomic background.
[00:00:56.050]3D spatial visualization is the ability to visualize real
[00:01:00.510]or imagined spatial relationships.
[00:01:02.940]This includes being able to mentally rotate, manipulate,
[00:01:06.540]organize, and reason spatial relationships.
[00:01:11.190]While there's lots of research
[00:01:12.237]that looks into how different demographics
[00:01:15.250]affect students' 3D spatial visualization skills,
[00:01:20.060]there's little to no research
[00:01:21.610]on how urban or rural students perform.
[00:01:28.330]The purpose of this research project is to determine
[00:01:30.730]if the development of 3D spatial visualization skills
[00:01:33.890]is impacted by the environment the students grow up in.
[00:01:38.080]For this research more than 10,000 7th grade students
[00:01:42.790]were tested to measure their 3D spacial visualization skills
[00:01:46.010]at the beginning of the school year.
[00:01:48.370]Students were tested from seven different states.
[00:01:51.640]These states include Texas, Michigan,
[00:01:54.290]Georgia, Colorado, Ohio, Tennessee, and Alabama.
[00:01:59.130]These students were given two tests
[00:02:00.670]to measure their 3D spatial visualization skills.
[00:02:03.480]The first test is called the PVSTR
[00:02:06.390]and this test looks at the student's ability
[00:02:08.510]to mentally rotate objects.
[00:02:11.010]The second test is called the DAT
[00:02:13.290]and it measures the ability to recognize objects
[00:02:15.550]that have been folded and unfolded.
[00:02:19.270]To determine which group, rural or urban,
[00:02:22.050]performed better on the 3D spatial visualization tests,
[00:02:25.600]an independent sample t-test was used
[00:02:27.690]to determine the variation of their means.
[00:02:32.630]Out of the more than 10,000 students that were tested,
[00:02:37.360]75.8% of the students were White,
[00:02:41.820]52.1% of the students were male,
[00:02:44.570]and 57.4% of the students were from a rural background.
[00:02:51.240]Figure 1 shows an example question from the PVSTR test.
[00:02:56.910]Students were asked to examine how the first two objects
[00:02:59.500]were rotated in relation to each other.
[00:03:01.790]They were then told to rotate the given shape
[00:03:04.000]and pick the answer that resembles the rotated shape.
[00:03:08.090]Figure 2 shows an example question from the DAT test.
[00:03:12.630]Students were asked to fold the shape on the left
[00:03:15.450]to form a 3D object mentally.
[00:03:17.950]Students were then told to pick the answer
[00:03:20.100]that resembles the shape they folded.
[00:03:23.790]For the results, Table 1 shows the examination
[00:03:26.800]of the DAT and PVSTR test scores
[00:03:30.850]for rural and urban students.
[00:03:34.360]Rural students had a 6.44 for their average mean
[00:03:40.170]and urban students had 5.26 for their average mean.
[00:03:44.730]The effect size for this t-test was .14.
[00:03:49.720]Tables 2 shows an examination
[00:03:51.690]of the DAT and PVSTR test scores
[00:03:54.780]for male and female students.
[00:03:57.270]Male students had a 6.67 average mean test score
[00:04:02.640]and female students had an average 5.26 mean test score.
[00:04:08.060]And the effect size for this t-test is .17.
[00:04:13.070]The DAT and PVSTR tests were measured on a 20 point scale
[00:04:18.200]with zero being the lowest score
[00:04:19.940]and 20 being the hightest score.
[00:04:23.580]The effect size indicates whether how significant
[00:04:29.410]or not significant the difference in the means were.
[00:04:40.580]In conclusion, analyzing the t-tests
[00:04:42.700]for the urban versus rural students
[00:04:44.860]shows that the rural students performed better
[00:04:47.280]on the DAT and PVSTR tests than urban students did.
[00:04:52.320]This data aligned with the hypothesis
[00:04:54.650]for the project we did.
[00:04:56.770]We hypothesized that rural students would perform better
[00:05:00.030]due to their environment.
[00:05:01.430]While the specific factors are unknown
[00:05:03.420]as to why rural students perform better
[00:05:05.440]on 3D spatial visualization tests,
[00:05:07.930]future work could include an examination
[00:05:10.030]of what these factors could be.
[00:05:15.330]It also shows that male students perform better
[00:05:17.560]on the DAT and PVSTR tests than the female students did.
[00:05:22.710]This aligns with other research in the field
[00:05:25.000]that male students usually perform better
[00:05:26.990]on 3D spatial visualization tests.
[00:05:30.070]This result indicates that the sample for this project
[00:05:32.470]is relatively consistent with other research.
[00:05:36.950]For future research an ANOVA test will be run
[00:05:40.470]to examine the differences in means between rural males,
[00:05:44.280]rural females, urban males, and urban females.
[00:05:47.170]This test will allow us to determine
[00:05:49.931]if the student's environment have an equal impact
[00:05:52.730]on both male and female students.
[00:05:56.870]This work was made possible
[00:05:58.090]by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences
[00:06:01.810]and the U.S. Department of Education.
[00:06:04.520]It was also made possible
[00:06:05.750]by the SOMA Nebraska Engineering Research Program.
[00:06:10.400]Thank you for your time.

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Examination of Rural vs. Urban middle school students 3D spatial visualization skills

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