Teaching first-year interdisciplinary students to use computational design software in a spatial thinking course

Many technology and design-based disciplines are facing increasing demands to prepare students to perform effectively within computational and simulation environments. Further, students' spatial abilities are an important prerequisite to technological literacy within virtual environments. In this paper, we explore the challenges and opportunities teaching a large group of first-year, interdisciplinary students to apply spatial thinking skills by undertaking a team-based, design project using an industrial-strength computational design environment (SolidWorks). We describe key instructional principles and techniques used to minimize the complexity of this computational tool, thus enabling students to focus on the tasks and reasoning requirements of the design project. While encouraged by the high degree of students' motivation for building functioning animated mechanical toys (AMTs), students frequently reported being “lost” in SolidWorks (SW) during the modeling phases of the project. Our techniques for scaffolding learning activities have continued to evolve to minimize the challenges faced by novice users of SW and to better support them in developing their spatial thinking skills. We also present our experiences, lessons learned, and ideas for improving the design of the project, and learning activities, such as worked examples of an AMT model, to further reduce the cognitive load and to enable students to focus on visual-spatial reasoning rather than on the tacit skills associated with using SolidWorks.