The experimental determination of mental discipline in school studies / by Harold Ordway Rugg.

  • Harold Rugg
Date:
1916
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The experimental determination of mental discipline in school studies / by Harold Ordway Rugg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Four hundred and thirteen college students in the Uni- versity of Illinois, ranging in age from 17 to 26 years, served as subjects. Three hundred and twenty-six fresh- men engineering students acted as the training group, 87 Juniors and seniors of the college of liberal arts and Sciences made up the control group. Both the training and the control group took the test series in February and June. Only the training group took the training course, which was the regular University of Illinois course of study offered to engineers in descriptive geometry. In order to be able to isolate the cause of any residual gains that might possibly be found favoring the training group, this group was further subdivided into seven sub-sections, each of which was composed of those students pursuing like courses of study. As descriptive geometry was the only course pursued by all the subjects, statistical study could be made of the relative training value of the other courses pursued by the subjects. This training course was a semester’s study of des- criptive geometry, a prescribed freshman course in the various engineering curriculums. The course is primarily a course in the solution of spatial problems, involving visual concepts. It is taught at the University of Illinois primarily as a disciplinary course, as a “pure science,” in opposition to the commonly accepted point of view that it is an applied science. The test series consisted of six written class tests for ability in the mental manipulation of spatial elements ; Numbers 1, 2, and 6 involved non-geometrical elements, Number 3 involved quasi-geometrical elements, and Tests 4 and 5 involved strictly geometrical elements. Prelimi- nary “laboratory” tests were given during the period September 1912 to January 1913 to 41 subjects, and upon this basis the final tests used in this investigation were
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