Spatial Skills and Success in Computing
Jack Parkinson and Quintin Cutts have been researching the connection between spatial ability and success in Computing Science at a university level. It has been discovered that, along with many STEM subjects, success in computing courses at university correlate with one’s spatial skills: that is, their ability to mentally manipulate 2D and 3D objects, identify visual patterns and other spatial cognitive tasks.
Jack’s MSci project in 2017 strengthened our understanding of this correlation by showing that people further advanced in their computing careers had stronger spatial skills on average than those starting out, and suggested a theoretical model for the relationship between spatial ability and success in Computing Science. This work was published and was well received by the Computing Science Education community, being awarded the Chair’s Award for best paper at the International Computing Science Education conference 2018.
Jack began his PhD in this area in 2019, starting by implementing a training programme for spatial skills within the School of Computing Science. This programme led to substantial gains in computing grades for students who initially began the course with low spatial skills and lower computing grades, and particularly those with less prior programming experience.
Following this, he has more closely examined the relationship between computing success and spatial skills by targeting individual factors, like expression evaluation and programming problem solving. Additionally, he has explored the relationship between spatial skills and final GPA outcomes.
Jack completed his PhD in 2023 and has begun work on a post-doctoral project involving spatial skills development in parimary schools called the STEM SPACE Project.
Publications
- Jack Parkinson and Quintin Cutts. 2023. Understanding Spatial Skills and Encoding Strategies in Student Problem Solving Activities. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 1 (ICER '23), Vol. 1. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 134–147.
- Jack Parkinson, Sebastian Dziallas, Fiona McNeill, and James Stephen Williams. 2023. Exploring Models and Theories of Spatial Skills in CS through a Multi-National Study. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 1 (ICER '23), Vol. 1. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 122–133.
- Jack Parkinson and Quintin Cutts. 2022. Relationships between an Early-Stage Spatial Skills Test and Final CS Degree Outcomes. In Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 1 (SIGCSE 2022). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 293–299.
- Jack Parkinson, Ryan Bockmon, Quintin Cutts, Michael Liut, Andrew Petersen, and Sheryl Sorby. 2021. Practice report: six studies of spatial skills training in introductory computer science. ACM Inroads 12, 4 (December 2021), 18–29.
- Anna Ly, Jack Parkinson, Quintin Cutts, Michael Liut, and Andrew Petersen. 2021. Spatial Skills and Demographic Factors in CS1. In 21st Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 4, 1–10.
- Jack Parkinson, Quintin Cutts, and Steve Draper. 2020. Relating Spatial Skills and Expression Evaluation. In United Kingdom & Ireland Computing Education Research conference. (UKICER '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 17–23.
- Jack Parkinson and Quintin Cutts. 2020. The Effect of a Spatial Skills Training Course in Introductory Computing. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 439–445.
- Jack Parkinson and Quintin Cutts. 2018. Investigating the Relationship Between Spatial Skills and Computer Science. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 106–114.
Short Papers and Abstracts
- Jack Parkinson. 2023. Improving Computational Thinking with Spatial Skills Development in Primary School. In Proceedings of the 18th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research (WiPSCE '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 33, 1–2.
- Jack Parkinson. 2023. An Overview of the Relationship between Spatial Skills and Computing Science. In Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on United Kingdom & Ireland Computing Education Research (UKICER '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 20, 1.
- Jack Parkinson. 2022. What does Space look like in CS? Mapping out the Relationship between Spatial Skills and CS Aptitude. In Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 2 (ICER '22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 46–47.
- Jack Parkinson. 2020. Investigating Spatial Skills in Computing Education. In Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research (ICER '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 340–341.
- Jack Parkinson. 2019. Exploring Spatial Skills and Computing in Primary and Secondary Education. In Proceedings of the 14th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (WiPSCE'19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 16, 1–3.