{"id":2558,"date":"2016-06-22T13:35:23","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T20:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.plm.automation.siemens.com\/t5\/Academic-News\/Creativity-and-spatial-thinking-research-using-Synchronous\/ba-p\/352282"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:11:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T12:11:25","slug":"creativity-and-spatial-thinking-research-using-synchronous-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/creativity-and-spatial-thinking-research-using-synchronous-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Creativity and spatial thinking research using Synchronous Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P>The data is in and early research supports Synchronous Technology as a tool that may impact student learning.Recently published scientific research correlates conceptual design blending with spatial ability and creativity. A research team led by Dr. Wade Goodridge, assistant engineering education professor at Utah State University, found that when students had the \u201cfree-form ability\u201d to create or solve open-ended problems in a solid modeling course, it significantly boosted creativity. In conceptual design blending, open-ended problems challenge students to engage the brain in a different way than with traditional solid modeling before. The point is to develop more creative and dynamic problem solving capabilities in future engineers.<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P>What does \u201cconceptual blending\u201d mean?Give a student two different concepts to think about and challenge them to produce a model based on the two.For example, when you challenge students to think about <STRONG>a hinge<\/STRONG> and <STRONG>a fish<\/STRONG>, they might come up with many variations of a hinged fish.<\/P><br \/>\n<P>&nbsp;<span class=\"lia-inline-image-display-wrapper lia-image-align-inline\" style=\"width: 409px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/09\/Hinged-Fish-1.png\" width=\"409\" height=\"321\" alt=\"Hinged Fish.png\" title=\"Hinged Fish.png\" \/><\/span>\ufeff<\/P><br \/>\n<P>What could you do with a <STRONG>desk<\/STRONG> and a <STRONG>chair<\/STRONG>?<\/P><br \/>\n<P>&nbsp;<span class=\"lia-inline-image-display-wrapper lia-image-align-inline\" style=\"width: 400px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/09\/Chair-Desk-1.png\" alt=\"Chair-Desk.png\" title=\"Chair-Desk.png\" \/><\/span>\ufeff<\/P><br \/>\n<P>\u201cSynchronous Technology seems to foster a direct and interactive modeling experience that makes it an excellent medium to use in researching creativity,\u201d said Dr. Goodridge. \u201cIt encourages immediate visual feedback with a hands-on type of editing that may endear it to younger student populations. I think solid modeling software with these capabilities, such as Solid Edge, can facilitate spatial thinking and creativity thus fostering it in pre-college students interested in STEM.\u201d<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P>Dr. Goodridge\u2019s team consisted of a graduate student in engineering education as well as two undergraduate researchers. The undergraduates were supported in their research by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) award. NSF is a leading governmental organization that awards highly competitive funding to institutions of higher education in the form of many different grant areas. A REU award is designed to bring undergraduate students to a hosting campus and engage them in cutting edge research. Utah State University\u2019s grant was the first&nbsp;NSF REU award to be offered for engineering education research. Solid Edge was the solid modeling software chosen for this research.<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P>The published paper titled \u201cCreativity Enhancement via Engineering Graphics: Conceptual Design Blending Approach\u201d was accepted by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.asee.org\/conferences-and-events\/conferences\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">American Society for Engineering Education<\/A>. If you are interested in learning more about this topic be sure to attend the session, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.asee.org\/public\/conferences\/64\/registration\/view_session?session_id=6633\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Pedagogy and Learning Within Engineering Design Graphics I<\/A>, at the ASEE conference on June 28, 2016.<\/P><\/p>\n<p><P>Don\u2019t forget to drop by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.plm.automation.siemens.com\/en_us\/academic\/resources\/nx\/index.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Siemens PLM Software<\/A> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cd-adapco.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">CD-Adapco<\/A> booth in the vendor trade area to learn more about our software and how it can assist your research.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The data is in and early research supports Synchronous Technology as a tool that may impact student learning.Recently published scientific research correlates conceptual design blending with s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46729,"featured_media":2564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2019\/09\/Chair-Desk-1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46729"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2558"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2565,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2558\/revisions\/2565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=2558"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}