Effects of computer-based animated and static graphics on learning to visualize three-dimensional objects

This study focused on the effects of a computer-based lesson to aid students in learning to depict three-dimensional objects in 2-D and two-dimensional objects in 3-D, and to rotate mentally three-dimensional objects. The lesson presented animated and static graphics with and without color. Fifty-seven students enrolled in three beginning engineering graphics classes at a southeastern university participated in the study. The students ranged in age from eighteen to twenty-five. Four of the students were female and fifty-three were male. The students drew numbers from a hat to form five groups. The groups were randomly assigned to five treatment conditions. A pretest-posttest design was employed to study the effects of the treatments. The 2-D and 3-D tests were developed by the researcher. The Mental Rotation test was developed by Shepard and Metzler and adapted for pencil and paper administration by Vandenberg. The results for transforming three-dimensional drawings to two-dimensional representations showed no significant differences among the mean scores for any of the treatments. For the two-dimensional test, both posttest 1 and the pretest had significant influence on posttest scores. There was a significant interaction effect between posttest 1 and the pretest. Because of the influence of the preliminary tests and because of the interaction between the tests and treatments, for the 3-D and Mental Rotation test, findings from this study cannot be interpreted directly. Instead, for comparisons between the treatments concerning 3-D and mental rotation skills, separate regression lines were plotted and confidence intervals were estabLished for each group. For the 3-D test, there was a main effect for the animation with color group. However, there were interaction effects for the static without color and static with color groups with posttest 1 and the pretest. The confidence intervals showed that the static with color and static without color groups were expected to score considerably higher than the other groups. For the Mental Rotation test, there was a main effect for the animation with color group. However, there were interaction effects for three of the groups with either posttest 1, the pretest or both. The confidence intervals showed that the two static groups were expected to score slightly higher than the other groups.