Spatial ability performance of female engineering students

This paper reports on studies conducted to evaluate the spatial understanding of female engineering students across a range of spatial tasks. Spatial ability is considered a fundamental skill in design-based disciplines and is often seen as a predictor of success in engineering graphics courses. Participants were novice female engineering students undertaking a first year introductory graphical communication course. Results are compared with previous studies that consistently show a gender bias favouring males. This paper profiles the performance of novice female engineering students on a psychometric test of 3D ability consisting of 12 different subtests and six test items in each. Issues associated with improving performance are also raised.