VISUAL REASONING INSTRUCTIONAL SOFTWARE SYSTEM

Visual reasoning is an essential skill for an engineer to possess, par ticularly as computer-aided design tools become more prevalent. In thi s paper, we describe an innovative interactive multimedia application that provides a student with the tools to build a strong foundation in visual reasoning. The system, called the Visual Reasoning Tutor, expl oits the missing view problem as a mechanism to develop the visual rea soning abilities of students. The Visual Reasoning Tutor provides a st udent with interactive, graphical operations to construct 3-D geometri c objects, varying levels of intelligent critiques throughout the solu tion process, and a graphical user interface which supports multimedia capabilities aimed to enhance the learning process. This paper presen ts an overview of the system components, a complete sample exercise, a nd testing results of several prototypes that have been used in the cl assroom. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.